B  M  5bfl  oaa 


.C.D.  LI 


WORKS  OF  ERNST  HAECKEL. 


HISTORY  OF  CREATION.    2  vols.  .        $5.00 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MAN.    2  vols.,  971  pages,  5.00 
THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MAN.    1  tot.,  378  pages,    1.00 

<visrr  TO  CEYLON, i.oo 

DIDDLE  OF  <THE  UNIVERSE,     .        .        .         1.50 
WONDERS  OF  LIFE,  .     1.50 

LAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION,  1.00 


Braunlich  &  Tesch  (Emil  Tesch),  Hofphot.  Jena. 


IAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION. 


Last  Words  on  Evolution, 


A  POPULAR  RETROSPECT  AND  SUMMARY 


BY 


ERNST    HAECKEL, 

PROFESSOR   AT   JENA    UNIVEBSITY. 


TRANSLATED  FROM  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


BY 


JOSEPH    McCABE. 


WITH  PORTRAIT  AND    THREE  PLATES. 


NEW  YORK. 

PETER  ECKLER,  PUBLISHER, 

35  FULTON  STREET. 


_ 

n 


CONTENTS. 

INTRODUCTION,      .  7 

PREFACE ....          13 

CHAPTER  I. 
THE  CONTROVERSY  ABOUT  CREATION. 

Evolution  and  Dogma, 19 

PLATE  I. — Genealogical  Tree  of  the  Vertebrates,      .  20 

CHAPTER  II. 
THE  STRUGGLE  OVER  OUR  GENEALOGICAL  TREE. 

Our  Ape-Relatives  and  the  Vertebrate -Stem,        .         .         69 
PLATE  II. — Skeletons  of  Five  Anthropoid  Apes,       .  70 

CHAPTER  III. 
THE  CONTROVERSY  OVER  THE  SOUL. 

The  Ideas  of  Immortality  and  God,     .         .         .         .119 
PLATE  III. — Embryos  of  Three  Mammals,  .  120 

APPENDIX. 
EVOLUTIONARY  TABLES. 

Geological  Ages  and  Periods,      .....       165 
Man's  Genealogical  Tree — First  Half,     .         .         .  166 

Man's  Genealogical  Tree — Second  Half,       ,         .         .167 

Classification  of  the  Primates, 168 

Genealogical  Tree  of  the  Primates 169 

Explanation  of  Genealogical  Table  I.       .         .         .  170 

POSTSCRIPT. 
Evolution  and  Jesuitism 171 


INTRODUCTION. 

A  FEW  months  ago  the  sensational  an- 
nouncement was  made  that  Professor 
Haeckel  had  abandoned  Darwinism,  and 
given  public  support  to  the  teaching  of  a 
Jesuit  writer.  There  was  something  piquant 
in  the  suggestion  that  the  '  Darwin  of  Ger- 
many" had  recanted  the  conclusions  of  fifty 
years  of  laborious  study.  Nor  could  people 
forget  that  only  two  years  before  Haeckel 
had  written  with  some  feeling  about  the  par- 
tial recantation  of  some  of  his  colleagues. 
Many  of  our  journals  boldly  declined  to  in- 
sert the  romantic  news,  which  came  through 
one  of  the  chief  international  press  agencies. 
Others  drew  the  attention  of  their  readers,  in 
jubilant  editorial  notes,  to  the  lively  prospect  it 
opened  out.  To  the  many  inquiries  addressed 
to  me  as  the  "apostle  of  Professor  Haeckel," 
as  Sir  Oliver  Lodge  dubs  me  in  a  genial 
letter,  I  timidly  represented  that  even  a  Ger- 

7 


fntrofcuctfom 

man  reporter  sometimes  drank.  But  the  cor- 
rection quickly  came  that  the  telegram  had 
exactly  reversed  the  position  taken  up  by  the 
great  biologist  It  is  only  just  to  the  honor- 
able calling  of  the  reporter  to  add  that,  ac- 
cording to  the  theory  current  in  Germany, 
the  message  was  tampered  with  by  subtle  and 
ubiquitous  Jesuistry.  Did  they  not  penetrate 
even  into  the  culinary  service  at  Hatfield  ? 

I  have  pleasure  in  now  introducing  the 
three  famous  lectures  delivered  by  Professor 
Haeckel  at  Berlin,  and  the  reader  will  see  the 
grotesqueness  of  the  original  announcement. 
They  are  the  last  public  deliverance  that  the 
aged  professor  will  ever  make.  His  enfeebled 
health  forbids  us  to  hope  that  his  decision 
may  yet  be  undone,  He  is  now  condemned, 
he  tells  me,  to  remain  a  passive  spectator  of 
the  tense  drama  in  which  he  has  played  so 
prominent  a  part  for  half  a  century.  For  him 
the  red  rays  fall  level  on  the  scene  and  the 
people  about  him.  It  may  be  that  they  light 
up  too  luridly,  too  falsely,  the  situation  in 
Germany;  but  the  reader  will  understand  how 

8 


fntrofcuctfon, 

a  Liberal  of  Haeckel's  temper  must  feel  his 
country  to  be  between  Scylla  and  Charybdis 
— between  and  increasingly  clear  alternative 
of  Catholicism  or  Socialism — with  a  helms- 
man at  the  wheel  whose  vagaries  inspire  no 
confidence. 

The  English  reader  will  care  to  be  in- 
structed on  the  antithesis  of  Virchow  and 
Haeckel  which  gives  point  to  these  lectures, 
and  which  is  often  misrepresented  in  this 
country.  Virchow,  the  greatest  pathologist 
and  one  of  the  leading  anthropologists  of  Ger- 
many, had  much  to  do  with  the  inspiring  of 
Haeckel's  Monistic  views  in  the  fifties.  Like 
several  other  prominent  German  thinkers, 
Virchow  subsequently  abandoned  the  positive 
Monistic  position  for  one  of  agnosticism  and 
scepticism,  and  a  long  and  bitter  conflict  en- 
sued. It  is  hardly  too  much  to  say  that  Vir- 
chow's  ultra-timid  reserve  in  regard  to  the 
evolution  of  man  and  other  questions  has  died 
with  him.  Apart  from  one  or  two  less  prom- 
inent anthropologists,  and  the  curious  dis- 
tinction drawn  by  Dr.  A.  R.  Wallace,  science 

9 


X 

Introduction. 

has  accepted  the  fact  of  evolution,  and  has, 
indeed,  accepted  the  main  lines  of  Haeckel's 
ancestral  tree  of  the  human  race. 

In  any  case,  Haeckel  had  the  splendid  re- 
venge of  surviving  his  old  teacher  and  almost 
life-long  opponent.  Berlin  had  for  years  been 
dominated  by  the  sceptical  temper  of  Virchow 
and  Du  Bois-Reymond.  The  ardent  evolu- 
tionist and  opponent  of  Catholicism  was  im- 
patient of  a  reserve  that  he  felt  to  be  an  ana- 
chronism in  science  and  an  effective  support 
of  reactionary  ideas.  It  was,  therefore,  with 
a  peculiar  satisfaction  that  he  received  the  in- 
vitation, after  Virchow's  death,  to  address  the 
Berlin  public.  Among  the  many  and  dis- 
tinguished honors  that  have  been  heaped 
upon  him  in  the  last  ten  years  this  was  felt 
by  him  to  hold  a  high  place.  He  could  at 
last  submit  freely,  in  the  capital  of  his  country, 
the  massive  foundations  and  the  imposing 
structure  of  a  doctrine  which  he  holds  to  be 
no  less  established  in  science  than  valuable  in 
the  general  cause  of  progress. 

The  lectures  are  reproduced  here  not  solely 

IO 


Introduction. 

because  of  the  interest  aroused  in  them  by  the 
"Jesuit"  telegram.  They  contain  a  very  val- 
uable summary  of  his  conclusions,  and  include 
the  latest  scientific  confirmation.  Rarely  has 
the  great  biologist  written  in  such  clear  and 
untechnical  phrases,  so  that  the  general  reader 
will  easily  learn  the  outlines  of  his  much-dis- 
cussed Monism.  To  closer  students,  who  are 
at  times  impatient  of  the  Lamarckian  phrase- 
ology of  Haeckel — to  all,  in  fact,  who  would 
like  to  see  how  the  same  evolutionary  truths 
are  expressed  without  reliance  on  the  inherit- 
ance of  acquired  characters — I  may  take  the 
opportunity  to  say  that  I  have  translated,  for 
the  same  publishers,  Professor  Guenther's 
"  Darwinism  and  the  Problems  of  Life,"  which 
will  shortly  be  in  their  hands. 

JOSEPH  McCABE. 

November, 


II 


PREFACE. 

IN  the  beginning  of  April,  1905,  I  received 
from  Berlin  a  very  unexpected  invitation 
to  deliver  a  popular  scientific  lecture  at  the 
Academy  of  Music  in  that  city.  I  at  first  de- 
clined this  flattering  invitation,  with  thanks, 
sending  them  a  copy  of  a  printed  declaration, 
dated  iyth  July,  1901,  which  I  had  made  fre- 
quent use  of,  to  the  effect  that  "I  could  not 
deliver  any  more  public  lectures,  on  account 
of  the  state  of  my  health,  my  advanced  age, 
and  the  many  labors  that  were  still  incumbent 
on  me/' 

I  was  persuaded  to  make  one  depature  from 
this  fixed  resolution,  firstly,  by  the  pressing 
entreaties  of  many  intimate  friends  at  Berlin. 
They  represented  to  me  how  important  it  was 
to  give  an  account  myself  to  the  educated 
Berlin  public  of  the  chief  evolutionary  con- 
clusions I  had  advocated  for  forty  years. 
They  pointed  out  emphatically  that  the  in- 

13 


preface* 

creasing  reaction  in  higher  circles,  the  grow- 
ing audacity  of  intolerant  orthodoxy,  the  pre- 
ponderance of  Ultramontanism,  and  the  dan- 
gers that  this  involved  for  freedom  of  thought 
in  Germany,  for  the  University  and  the  school, 
made  it  imperative  to  take  vigorous  action. 
It  happened  that  I  had  just  been  following  the 
interesting  efforts  that  the  Church  has  lately 
made  to  enter  into  a  peaceful  compromise 
with  its  deadly  enemy,  Monistic  science.  It 
has  decided  to  accept  to  a  certain  extent,  and 
to  accommodate  to  its  creed  (in  a  distorted  and 
mutilated  form)  the  doctrine  of  evolution, 
which  it  has  vehemently  opposed  for  thirty 
years.  This  remarkable  change  of  front  on 
the  part  of  the  Church  militant  seemed  to  me 
so  interesting  and  important,  and  at  the  same 
time  so  misleading  and  mischievous,  that  I 
chose  it  as  the  subject  of  a  popular  lecture, 
and  accepted  the  invitation  to  Berlin. 

After  a  few  days,  when  I  had  written  my 
discourse,  I  was  advised  from  Berlin  that  the 
applications  for  admission  were  so  numerous 
that  the  lecture  must  either  be  repeated  or  di- 

14 


preface* 

vided  into  two.  I  chose  the  latter  course,  as 
the  material  was  very  abundant.  In  compli- 
ance with  an  urgent  request,  I  repeated  the 
two  lectures  (iyth  and  i8th  April);  and  as 
demands  for  fresh  lectures  continued  to  reach 
me,  I  was  persuaded  to  add  a  "farewell  lec- 
ture" (on  i gth  April),  in  which  I  dealt  with  a 
number  of  important  questions  that  had  not 
been  adequately  treated. 

The  noble  gift  of  effective  oratory  has  been 
denied  me  by  Nature.  Though  I  have  taught 
for  eighty-eight  terms  at  the  little  University 
of  Jena,  I  have  never  been  able  to  overcome 
a  certain  nervousness  about  appearing  in  pub- 
lic, and  have  never  acquired  the  art  of  ex- 
pressing my  thoughts  in  burning  language 
and  with  appropriate  gesture.  For  these  and 
other  reasons,  I  have  rarely  consented  to  take 
part  in  scientific  and  other  congresses;  the 
few  speeches  that  I  have  delivered  on  such 
occasions,  and  are  issued  in  collected  form, 
were  drawn  from  me  by  my  deep  interest  in 
the  great  struggle  for  the  triumph  of  truth. 
However,  in  the  three  Berlin  lectures — my 

15 


preface. 

last  public  addresses — I  had  no  design  of 
winning  my  hearers  to  my  opinions  by  means 
of  oratory.  It  was  rather  my  intention  to  put 
before  them,  in  connected  form,  the  great 
groups  of  biological  facts,  by  which  they  could, 
on  impartial  consideration,  convince  them- 
selves of  the  truth  and  importance  of  the 
theory  of  evolution. 

Readers  who  are  interested  in  the  evolu- 
tion-controversy, as  I  here  describe  it,  will  find 
in  my  earlier  works  (  The  History  of  Creation, 
The  Evolution  of  Man,  The  Riddle  of  the  Uni- 
verse, and  The  Wonders  of  Life)  a  thorough 
treatment  of  the  views  I  have  summarily  pre- 
sented. I  do  not  belong  to  the  amiable  group 
of  "men  of  compromise,"  but  am  in  the  habit 
of  giving  candid  and  straithforward  expression 
to  the  convictions  which  a  half-century  of 
serious  and  laborious  study  has  led  me  to 
form.  If  I  seem  to  be  a  tactless  and  incon- 
siderate "fighter,"  I  pray  you  to  remember 
that  "conflict  is  the  father  of  all  things,"  and 
that  the  victory  of  pure  reason  over  current 
superstition  will  not  be  achieved  without  a 

16 


preface* 

tremendous  struggle.  But  I  regard  ideas  only 
in  my  struggles;  to  the  persons  of  my  oppo- 
nents I  am  indifferent,  bitterly  as  they  have 
attacked  and  slandered  my  own  person. 

Although  I  have  lived  in  Berlin  for  many 
years  as  student  and  teacher,  and  have  always 
been  in  communication  with  scientific  circles 
there,  I  have  only  once  before  delivered  a 
public  lecture  in  that  city.  That  was  on  "The 
Division  of  Labor  in  Nature  and  Human 
Life,"  (ryth  December,  1868).  I  was,  there- 
fore, somewhat  gratified  to  be  able  to  speak 
there  again  (and  for  the  last  time),  after  thirty- 
six  years,  especially  as  it  was  in  the  very  spot, 
the  hall  of  the  Academy  of  Music,  in  which  I 
had  heard  the  leaders  of  the  Berlin  University 
speak  fifty  years  ago. 

It  is  with  great  pleasure  that  I  express  my 
cordial  thanks  to  those  who  invited  me  to  de- 
liver these  lectures,  and  who  did  so  much  to 
make  my  stay  in  the  capital  pleasant;  and 
also  to  my  many  hearers  for  their  amiable  and 
sympathetic  attention. 

ERNST  HAECKEL. 

JENA,  yth  May,  1905. 


CHAPTER  I. 
THE  CONTROVERSY  ABOUT   CREATION. 

EVOLUTION    AND    DOGMA. 


EXPLANATION  OF  PLATE  I. 

GENEALOGICAL  TREE  OF  THE  VERTEBRATES. 

THE  genetic  relationship  of  all  vertebrates,  from  the  earliest 
acrania  and  fishes  up  to  the  apes  and  man,  is  proved  in  its 
main  lines  by  the  concordant  testimony  of  paleontology, 
comparative  anatomy,  and  embryology.  All  competent  and 
impartial  zoologists  now  agree  that  the  vertebrates  are  all 
descended  from  a  single  stem,  and  that  the  root  of  this  is  to 
be  sought  in  extinct  pre-Silurian  Acrania  (i),  somewhat 
similar  to  the  living  lancelet.  The  Cyclostoma  (2)  represent 
the  transition  from  the  latter  to  ^&  Fishes  (3)  ;  and  theZ^- 
neusts  (4)  the  trasition  from  these  to  the  Amphibia  (5). 
From  the  latter  have  been  developed  the  Reptiles  (6)  on  the 
one  hand,  and  the  Mammals  (7)  on  the  other.  The  most 
important  branch  of  this  most  advanced  class  is  the  Pri- 
mates (8)  ;  from  the  half -apes,  or  lemurs,  a  direct  line  leads, 
through  the  baboons,  to  the  anthropoid  apes,  and  through 
these  on  to  man.  (Cf.  the  tables  on  pp.  165-170).  Further 
information  will  be  found  in  chapters  xxiv.-xxvii.  of  the 
History  of  Creation,  and  chapters  xxi.-xxiii.  of  the  Evolution 
of  Man, 


20 


ERNST  HAECKEL  :  LAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION. 


PLATE  I. 


Primates 

Man. 


Corillt 


8F  \ 
Or^9  \ 
Safyrus  \ 

p-   :  .- -. 

*«    ,'  /  7  Mammals    Nx 
'  /        Mammalia 


£cUrc.cft.ta        ' 
Tailtd  Am.ph&la.lJ^'  / 

/\... 


°-    Pnlam.phitig.ns  ,'2    CycIostOTna          x 


Vk ^ 


_L^  x,  Ai*t'*mTit- 


Prwerlehrabis 


GENEALOGICAL  TREE  OF  THE 
VERTEBRATES 


I.  ACRANIA  (SKULL-LESS),  i 
II.  CRANIOTA  (WITH  SKULL) 
II  A.  Cyclostoma,  2 
II  B.  Gnathostoma 
B  i.  Anamnia,   3-5 
B  2.  Amniota,   6-8 


LAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION. 

CHAPTER  I. 
THE   CONTROVERSY  ABOUT   CREATION. 

EVOLUTION  AND   DOGMA. 

THE  controversy  over  the  idea  of  evolu- 
tion is  a  prominent  feature  in  the  mental 
life  of  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  true  that 
a  few  great  thinkers  had  spoken  of  a  natural 
evolution  of  all  things  several  thousand  years 
ago.  They  had,  indeed,  partly  investigated 
the  laws  that  control  the  birth  and  death  of 
the  world,  and  the  rise  of  the  earth  and  its 
inhabitants ;  even  the  creation-stories  and 
the  myths  of  the  older  religions  betray  a  par- 
tial influence  of  these  evolutionary  ideas. 
But  it  was  not  until  the  nineteenth  century 
that  the  idea  of  evolution  took  definite  shape 
and  was  scientifically  grounded  on  various 
classes  of  evidence ;  and  it  was  not  until  the 
last  third  of  the  century  that  it  won  general 


21 


Xast  Tlfllor&8  on  Evolution, 

recognition.  The  intimate  connection  that 
was  proved  to  exist  between  all  branches  of 
knowledge,  once  the  continuity  of  historical 
development  was  realized,  and  the  union  of 
them  all  through  the  Monistic  philosophy, 
are  achievements  of  the  last  few  decades. 

The  great  majority  of  the  older  ideas  that 
thoughtful  men  had  formed  on  the  origin 
and  nature  of  the  world  and  their  own  frame 
were  far  removed  from  the  notion  of  "self- 
development."  They  culminated  in  more  or 
less  obscure  creation-myths,  which  generally 
put  in  the  foreground  the  idea  of  a  personal 
Creator.  Just  as  man  has  used  intelligence 
and  design  in  the  making  of  his  weapons  and 
tools,  his  houses  and  his  boats,  so  it  was 
thought  that  the  Creator  had  fashioned  the 
world  with  art  and  intelligence,  according  to 
a  definite  plan.  Among  the  many  legends 
of  this  kind  the  ancient  Semitic  story  of  cre- 
ation, familiar  to  us  as  the  Mosaic  narrative, 
but  drawn  for  the  most  part  from  Babylonian 
sources,  has  obtained  a  very  great  influence 
on  European  culture  owing  to  the  general 


22 


Evolution  ant)  Dogma. 

acceptance  of  the  Bible.  The  belief  in  mir- 
acles, that  is  involved  in  these  religious  le- 
gends, was  bound  to  come  in  conflict,  at  an 
early  date,  with  the  evolutionary  ideas  of  in- 
dependent philosophical  research.  On  the  one 
hand,  in  the  prevalent  religious  teaching,  we 
had  the  supernatural  world,  the  miraculous, 
teleology :  on  the  other  hand,  in  the  nascent 
science  of  evolution,  only  natural  law,  pure 
reason,  mechanical  causality.  Every  step  that 
was  made  by  this  science,  brought  into  greater 
relief  its  inconsistency  with  the  predominant 
religion.1 

1  The  word  "  evolution  "  is  still  used  in  so  many  differ- 
ent ways  in  various  sciences  that  it  is  important  to  fix  it  in 
the  general  significance  which  we  here  give  it.  By  "  evo- 
lution," in  the  widest  sense,  I  understand  the  unceasing 
"  mutations  of  substance,"  adopting  Spinoza's  fundamental 
conception  of  substance ;  it  unites  inseparably  in  itself 
"  matter  and  force  (or  energy,")  or  "  nature  and  mind  " 
(=  the  world  and  God).  Hence  the  science  of  evolution 
in  its  broader  range  is  "  the  history  of  substance,"  which 
postulates  the  general  validity  of  "  the  law  of  substance." 
In  the  latter  are  combined  "  the  law  of  the  constancy  of 
matter"  (Lavoisier,  1789)  and  "the  law  of  the  conserva- 
tion of  energy  "  (Robert  Mayer,  1842),  however  varied  may 
be  the  changes  of  form  of  these  elements  in  the  world- 
process.  Cf.  Chapter  XXI.  of  The  Riddle. 


3Last  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

If  we  glance  for  a  moment  at  the  various 
fields  in  which  the  idea  of  evolution  is  scien- 
tifically applied  we  find  that,  firstly,  the 
whole  universe  is  conceived  as  a  unity  ;  sec- 
ondly, our  earth  ;  thirdly,  organic  life  on  the 
earth;  fourthly,  man,  as  its  highest  product; 
and  fifthly,  the  soul,  as  a  special  immaterial 
entity.  Thus  we  have,  in  historical  succes- 
sion, the  evolutionary  research  of  cosmology, 
geology,  biology,  anthropology,  and  psy- 
chology. 

The  first  comprehensive  idea  of  cosmologi- 
cal  evolution  was  put  forth  by  the  famous 
critical  philosopher  Immanuel  Kant,  in  1755, 
in  the  great  work  of  his  earlier  years,  General 
Natural  History  of  the  Heavens,  or  an  At- 
tempt to  Conceive  and  Explain  the  Origin  of 
the  Universe  mechanically,  according  to  the 
Newtonian  Laws.  This  remarkable  work 
appeared  anonymously,  and  was  dedicated  to 
Frederick  the  Great,  who,  however,  never 
saw  it.  It  was  little  noticed,  and  was  soon 
entirely  forgotten,  until  it  was  exhumed 
ninety  years  afterwards  by  Alexander  von 

24 


Evolution  an&  Dogma. 

Humboldt.  Note  particulary  that  on  the 
title-page  stress  is  laid  on  the  mechanical 
origin  of  the  world  and  its  explanation  on 
Newtonian  principles ;  in  this  way  the  strict- 
ly Monistic  character  of  the  whole  cosmog- 
ony and  the  absolutely  universal  rule  of 
natural  law  are  clearly  expressed.  It  is  true 
that  Kant  speaks  much  in  it  of  God  and  his 
wisdom  and  omnipotence ;  but  this  is  limited 
to  the  affirmation  that  God  created  once  for 
all  the  unchangeable  laws  of  nature,  and  was 
henceforward  bound  by  them  and  only  able 
to  work  through  them.  The  Dualism  which 
became  so  pronounced  subsequently  in  the 
philosopher  of  Koenigsberg  counts  for  very 
little  here. 

The  idea  of  a  natural  development  of  the 
world  occurs  in  a  clearer  and  more  consist- 
ent form,  and  is  provided  with  a  firm  mathe- 
matical basis,  forty  years  afterwards,  in  the 
remarkable  Mecanique  Celeste  of  Pierre 
Laplace.  His  popular  Exposition  du  Sys- 
teme  du  Monde  (1796)  destroyed  at  its  roots 
the  legend  of  creation  that  had  hitherto 

25 


OLast  Morfcs  on  Evolution* 

prevailed,  or  the  Mosaic  narrative  in  the 
Bible.  Laplace,  who  had  become  Minister 
of  the  Interior,  Count,  and  Chancellor  of  the 
Senate,  under  Napoleon,  was  merely  honor- 
able and  consistent  when  he  replied  to  the 
emperor's  question,  "What  room  there  was 
for  God  in  his  system  ?"  "  Sire,  I  had  no 
need  for  that  unfounded  hypothesis."  What 
strange  ministers  there  are  sometimes  I1  The 
shrewdness  of  the  Church  soon  recognized 
that  the  personal  Creator  was  dethroned,  and 
the  creation-myth  destroyed,  by  this  Monis- 

1  Certain  orthodox  periodicals  have  lately  endeavored  to 
deny  this  famous  atheistical  confession  of  the  great 
Laplace,  which  was  merely  a  candid  deduction  of  his  splen- 
did cosmic  system.  They  say  that  this  Monistic  natural 
philosopher  acknowledged  the  Catholic  faith  on  his  death- 
bed ;  and  in  proof  of  this  they  offer  us  the  later  testimony 
of  an  Ultramontane  priest.  We  need  not  point  out  how 
uncertain  is  the  love  of  truth  of  these  heated  partisans. 
When  testimony  of  this  kind  tends  to  "the  good  of  religion  " 
(/.  e.,  their  own  good,)  it  is  held  to  be  a  pious  work  (pia 
fraus).  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  interesting  to  recall  the 
reply  of  a  Prussian  Minister  of  Religion,  Von  Zedlitz, 
1 20  years  ago,  to  the  Breslau  Consistory,  when  it  urged 
that  "  those  who  believe  most  are  the  best  subjects."  He 
wrote  in  rely  :  "  His  majesty  [Frederick  the  Great]  is  not 
disposed  to  rest  the  security  of  his  State  on  the  stupidity  of 
his  subjects." 

26 


Bv>olution  an& 

tic  and  now  generally  received  theory  of 
cosmic  development.  Nevertheless  it  main- 
tained towards  it  the  attitude  which  it  had 
taken  up  250  years  earlier  in  regard  to  the 
closely  related  and  irrefutable  system  of 
Copernicus.  It  endeavored  to  conceal  the 
truth  as  long  as  possible,  or  to  oppose  it 
with  Jesuitical  methods,  and  finally  it  yield- 
ed. If  the  Churches  now  silently  admit  the 
Copernican  system  and  the  cosmogony  of 
Laplace  and  have  ceased  to  oppose  them,  we 
must  attribute  the  fact,  partly  to  a  feeling  of 
their  spiritual  impotence,  partly  to  an  astute 
calculation  that  the  ignorant  masses  do  not 
reflect  on  these  great  problems. 

In  order  to  obtain  a  clear  idea  and  a  firm 
conviction  of  this  cosmic  evolution  by  natural 
law,  the  eternal  birth  and  death  of  millions 
of  suns  and  stars,  one  needs  some  mathe- 
matical training  and  lively  imagination,  as 
well  as  a  certain  competence  in  astronomy 
and  physics.  The  evolutionary  process  is 
much  simpler,  and  more  readily  grasped  in 
geology.  Every  shower  of  rain  or  wave  of 

27 


Xast  •'CGlor&s  on  Evolution. 

the  sea,  every  volcanic  eruption  and  every 
pebble  gives  us  a  direct  proof  of  the  changes 
that  are  constantly  taking  place  on  the  sur- 
face of  our  planet.  However,  the  historical 
significance  of  these  changes  was  not  prop- 
erly appreciated  until  1822,  by  Karl  von 
Hoff  of  Gotha,  and  modern  geology  was 
only  founded  in  1830  by  Charles  Lyell,  who 
explained  the  whole  origin  and  composition 
of  the  solid  crust  of  the  earth,  the  formation 
of  the  mountains,  and  the  periods  of  the 
earth's  development,  in  a  connected  system 
by  natural  laws.  From  the  immense  thick- 
ness of  the  stratified  rocks,  which  contain  the 
fossilized  remains  of  extinct  organisms,  we 
discovered  the  enormous  length — running 
into  millions  of  years — of  the  periods  during 
which  these  sedimentary  rocks  were  de- 
posited in  water.  Even  the  duration  of  the 
organic  history  of  the  earth — that  is  to  say, 
the  period  during  which  the  plant  and  animal 
population  of  our  planet  was  developing — 
must  itself  be  put  at  more  than  a  hundred 

million  years.     These  results  of  geology  and 

28 


Evolution  ant>  H>ogma. 

paleontology  destroyed  the  current  legend  of 
the  six  days'  work  of  a  personal  Creator. 
Many  attempts  were  made,  it  is  true,  and  are 
still  being  made,  to  reconcile  the  Mosaic 
supernatural  story  of  creation  with  modern 
geology.1  All  these  efforts  of  believers  are 
in  vain.  We  may  say,  in  fact,  that  it  is 
precisely  the  study  of  geology,  the  reflection 
it  entails  on  the  enormous  periods  of  evolu- 
tion, and  the  habit  of  seeking  the  simple 
mechanical  causes  of  their  constant  changes, 
that  contribute  very  considerably  to  the  ad- 
vance of  enlightenment.  Yet  in  spite  of  this 
(or,  possibly,  because  of  this),  geological 
instruction  is  either  greatly  neglected  or 
entirely  suppressed  in  most  schools.  It  is 
certainly  eminently  calculated  (in  connection 
with  geography)  to  enlarge  the  mind,  and 
acquaint  the  child  with  the  idea  of  evolution. 

1  See,  for  instance,  Moses  and  Geology -,  or  Harmony  of 
the  Bible  wtth  Science,  "by  Samuel  Kinns  (1882).  In  this 
work  the  pious  Biblical  astronomer  executes  the  most  in- 
credible and  Jesuitical  manoeuvres  in  order  to  bring  about 
an  impossible  reconciliation  between  science  and  the  Bibli- 
cal narrative. 

29 


Xast  <Qdor&s  on  Evolution. 

An  educated  person  who  knows  the  elements 
of  geology  will  never  experience  ennui.  He 
will  find  everywhere  in  surrounding  nature, 
in  the  rocks  and  in  the  water,  in  the  desert 
and  on  the  mountains,  the  most  instructive 
stimuli  to  reflection. 

The  evolutionary  process  in  organic  nature 
is  much  more  difficult  to  grasp.  Here  we 
must  distinguish  two  different  series  of  bio- 
logical development,  which  have  only  been 
brought  into  proper  causal  connection  by 
means  of  our  biogenetic  law  (1866) ;  one  series 
is  found  in  embryology  (or  ontogeny),  the 
other  in  phylogeny  (or  race-development). 
In  Germany  "evolution"  always  meant  em- 
bryology, or  a  part  of  the  whole,  until  forty 
years  ago.  It  stood  for  a  microscopic  ex- 
amination of  the  wonderful  processes  by 
means  of  which  the  elaborate  structure  of  the 
plant  or  animal  body  is  formed  from  the 
simple  seed  of  the  plant  or  the  egg  of  the 
bird.  Until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth 
century  the  erroneous  view  was  generally  re- 
ceived that  this  marvelously  complicated 

30 


Evolution  anfc 

structure  existed,  completely  formed,  in  the 
simple  ovum,  and  that  the  various  organs 
had  merely  to  grow  and  to  shape  themselves 
independently  by  a  process  of  "  evolution " 
(or  unfolding),  before  they  entered  into  ac- 
tivity. An  able  German  scientist,  Caspar 
Friedrich  Wolff  (son  of  a  Berlin  tailor),  had 
already  shown  the  error  of  this  "pre-forma- 
tion  theory"  in  1759.  He  had  proved,  in  his 
dissertation  for  the  doctorate,  that  no  trace  of 
the  later  body,  of  its  bones,  muscles,  nerves, 
and  feathers,  can  be  found  in  the  hen's  egg 
(the  commonest  and  most  convenient  object 
for  study),  but  merely  a  small  round  disk, 
consisting  of  two  thin  superimposed  layers. 
He  had  further  showed  that  the  various  or- 
gans are  only  built  up  gradually  out  of  these 
simple  elements,  and  that  we  can  trace,  step 
by  step,  a  series  of  real  new  growths.  How- 
ever, these  momentous  discoveries,  and  the 
sound  "theory  of  epigenesis"  that  he  based 
on  them,  were  wholly  ignored  for  fifty  years, 
and  even  rejected  by  the  leading  authorities. 
It  was  not  until  Oken  had  re-discovered  these 

31 


Olast  Worfcs  on  J6x>olutfotu 

important  facts  at  Jena  (1806),  Pander  had 
more  carefully  distinguished  the  germinal 
layers  (1817),  and  finally  Carl  Ernst  von  Baer 
had  happily  combined  observation  and  reflec- 
tion in  his  classical  Animal  Embryology  ( 1 828), 
that  embryology  attained  the  rank  of  an  in- 
dependent science  with  a  sound  empirical 
base. 

A  little  later  it  secured  a  well-merited  rec- 
ognition in  botany  also,  especially  owing  to 
the  efforts  of  Matthias  Schleiden  of  Jena,  the 
distinguished  student  who  provided  biology 
with  a  new  foundation  in  the  "cell  theory" 
(1838).  But  it  was  not  until  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century  that  people  generally  rec- 
ognized that  the  ovum  of  the  plant  or  animal 
is  itself  only  a  simple  cell,  and  that  the  later 
tissues  and  organs  gradually  develop  from 
this  "elementary  organism"  by  a  repeated 
cleavage  of,  and  division  of  labor  in,  the  cells. 
The  most  important  step  was  then  made  of 
recognizing  that  our  human  organism  also  de- 
velops from  an  ovum  (first  discovered  by  Baer 
in  1827),  in  virtue  of  the  same  laws,  and  that 

32 


Evolution  anfc  Bogma* 

its  embryonic  development  resembles  that  of 
the  other  mammals,  especially  that  of  the  ape. 
Each  of  us  was,  at  the  beginning  of  his  exist- 
ence, a  simple  globule  of  protoplasm,  sur- 
rounded by  a  membrane,  about  xio-  of  an  inch 
in  diameter,  with  a  firmer  nucleus  inside  it. 
These  important  embryological  discoveries 
confirmed  the  rational  conception  of  the  hu- 
man organism  that  had  been  attained  much 
earlier  by  comparative  anatomy:  the  convic- 
tion that  the  human  frame  is  built  in  the  same 
way,  and  develops  similarly  from  a  simple 
ovum,  as  the  body  of  all  other  mammals. 
Even  Linne  had  already  (1735)  given  man  a 
place  in  the  mammal  class  in  his  famous  Sys- 
tem of  Nature. 

Differently  from  these  embryological  facts, 
which  can  be  directly  observed,  the  phenom- 
ena of  phylogeny  (the  development  of  spe- 
cies), which  are  needed  to  set  the  former  in 
their  true  light,  are  usually  outside  the  range 
of  immediate  observation.  What  was  the 
origin  of  the  countless  species  of  animals  and 
plants  ?  How  can  we  explain  the  remarkable 

33 


Xast  TOorfcs  on  Evolution. 

relationships  which  unite  similar  species  into 
genera  and  these  into  classes?  Linne  answers 
the  question  very  simply  with  the  belief  in 
creation,  relying  on  the  generally  accepted 
Mosaic  narrative:  "There  are  as  many  dif- 
ferent species  of  animals  and  plants  as  there 
were  different  forms  created  by  God  in  the 
beginning/'  The  first  scientific  answer  was 
given  in  1809  by  the  great  French  scientist, 
Lamarck.  He  taught,  in  his  suggestive  Phi- 
losophie  Zoologique,  that  the  resemblances  in 
form  and  structure  of  groups  of  species  are 
due  to  real  affinity,  and  that  all  organisms  de- 
scend from  a  few  very  simple  primitive  forms 
(or  possibly,  from  a  single  one).  These  prim- 
itive forms  were  developed  out  of  lifeless 
matter  by  spontaneous  generation.  The  re- 
semblances of  related  groups  of  species  are 
explained  by  inheritance  from  common  stem- 
forms  ;  their  dissimilarities  are  due  to  adapta- 
tion to  different  environments,  and  to  variety 
in  the  action  of  the  modefiable  organs.  The 
human  race  has  arisen  in  the  same  way,  by 
transformation  of  a  series  of  mammal  an- 

34 


Devolution  anfc  H>ogma* 

cestors,  the  nearest  of  which  are  ape-like 
primates. 

These  great  ideas  of  Lamarck,  which  threw 
light  on  the  whole  field  of  organic  life,  and 
were  closely  approached  by  Goethe  in  his  own 
speculations,  gave  rise  to  the  theory  that  we 
now  know  as  transformism,  or  the  theory  of 
evolution  or  descent  But  the  far-seeing  La- 
marck was — as  Caspar  Friedrich  Wolff  had 
been  fifty  years  before — half  a  century  before 
his  time.  His  theory  obtained  no  recognition, 
and  was  soon  wholly  forgotten. 

It  was  brought  into  the  light  once  more  in 
1859  by  the  genius  of  Charles  Darwin,  who 
had  been  born  in  the  very  year  that  the  /%/- 
losophie  Zoologique  was  published.  The  sub- 
stance and  the  success  of  his  system,  which 
has  gone  by  the  name  of  Darwinism  (in  the 
wider  sense)  for  forty-six  years,  are  so  gen- 
erally known  that  I  need  not  dwell  on  them. 
I  will  only  point  out  that  the  great  success  of 
Darwin's  epoch-making  works  is  due  to  two 
causes:  firstly,  to  the  fact  that  the  English 
scientist  most  ingeniously  worked  up  the  em- 

35 


%ast  KHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

pirical  material  that  had  accumulated  during 
fifty  years  into  a  systematic  proof  of  the  theory 
of  descent ;  and  secondly,  to  the  fact  that  he 
gave  it  the  support  of  a  second  theory  of  his 
own,  the  theory  of  natural  selection.  This 
theory  which  gives  a  causal  explanation  of 
the  transformation  of  species,  is  what  we 
ought  to  call  "Darwinism"  in  the  strict  sense. 
We  cannot  go  here  into  the  question  how  far 
this  theory  is  justified,  or  how  far  it  is  cor- 
rected by  more  recent  theories,  such  as  Weis- 
mann's  theory  of  germ-plasm  (1844),  or  De 
Vries's  theory  of  mutations  (1900).  Our  con- 
cern is  rather  with  the  unparalleled  influence 
that  Darwinism,  and  its  application  to  man, 
have  had  during  the  last  forty  years  on  the 
whole  province  of  science ;  and  at  the  same 
time,  with  its  irreconcilable  opposition  to  the 
dogmas  of  the  Churches. 

The  extension  of  the  theory  of  evolution  to 
man  was,  naturally,  one  of  the  most  interest- 
ing and  momentous  applications  of  it.  If  all 
other  organisms  arose,  not  by  a  miraculous 
creation,  but  by  a  natural  modification  of  ear- 

36 


Evolution  anfc 

lier  forms  of  life,  the  presumption  is  that  the 
human  race  also  was  developed  by  the  trans- 
formation of  the  most  man-like  mammals,  the 
primates  of  Linne — the  apes  and  lemurs. 
This  natural  inference,  which  Lamarck  had 
drawn  in  his  simple  way,  but  Darwin  had  at 
first  explicitly  avoided,  was  first  thoroughly 
established  by  the  gifted  zoologist,  Thomas 
Huxley,  in  his  three  lectures  on  Man's  Place 
in  Nature  (1863).  He  showed  that  this  "ques- 
tion of  questions"  is  unequivocally  answered 
by  three  chief  witnesses — the  natural  history 
of  the  anthropoid  apes,  the  anatomic  and  em- 
bryological  relations  of  man  to  the  animals 
immediately  below  him,  and  the  recently  dis- 
covered fossil  human  remains.  Darwin  en- 
tirely accepted  these  conclusions  of  his  friend 
eight  years  afterwards,  and,  in  his  two-volume 
work,  The  Descent  of  Man  and  his  Sexual  Se- 
lection (1871),  furnished  a  number  of  new 
proofs  in  support  of  the  dreaded  "descent  of 
man  from  the  ape/'  I  myself  then  (1874) 
completed  the  task  I  had  begun  in  1866,  of 
determining  approximately  the  whole  series 

37 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution* 

of  the  extinct  animal  ancestors  of  the  human 
race,  on  the  ground  of  comparative  anatomy, 
embryology,  and  paleontology.  This  attempt 
was  improved,  as  our  knowledge  advanced, 
in  the  five  editions  of  my  Evolution  of  Man. 
In  the  last  twenty  years  a  vast  literature  on 
the  subject  has  accumulated.  I  must  assume 
that  you  are  acquainted  with  the  contents  of 
one  or  other  of  these  works,  and  will  turn  to 
the  question,  that  especially  engages  our  at- 
tention at  present,  how  the  inevitable  struggle 
between  these  momentous  achievements  of 
modern  science  and  the  dogmas  of  the 
Churches  has  run  in  recent  years. 

It  was  obvious  that  both  the  general  theory 
of  evolution  and  its  extension  to  man  in  par- 
ticular must  meet  from  the  first  with  the  most 
determined  resistance  on  the  part  of  the 
Churches.  Both  were  in  flagrant  contradiction 
to  the  Mosaic  story  of  creation,  and  other  Bib- 
lical dogmas  that  were  involved  in  it,  and  are 
still  taught  in  our  elementary  schools.  It  is 
creditable  to  the  shrewdness  of  the  theologi- 
ans and  their  associates,  the  metaphysicians, 

38 


Evolution  an&  Dogma* 

that  they  at  once  rejected  Darwinism,  and 
made  a  particularly  energetic  resistance  in 
their  writings  to  its  chief  consequence,  the  de- 
scent of  man  from  ape.  This  resistance  seem- 
ed the  more  justified  and  hopeful  as,  for  seven 
or  eight  years  after  Darwin's  appearance,  few 
biologists  accepted  his  theory,  and  the  general 
attitude  amongst  them  was  one  of  cold  scepti- 
cism. I  can  well  testify  to  this  from  my  own 
experience.  When  I  first  openly  advocated 
Darwin's  theory  at  a  scientific  congress  at 
Stettin  in  1863,  I  was  almost  alone,  and  was 
blamed  by  the  great  majority  for  taking  up 
seriously  so  fantastic  a  theory,  "the  dream  of 
an  after-dinner  nap,"  as  the  Goettinger  zo- 
ologist, Keferstein,  called  it. 

The  general  attitude  towards  Nature  fifty 
years  ago  was  so  different  from  that  we  find 
everywhere  to-day,  that  it  is  difficult  to  con- 
vey a  clear  idea  of  it  to  a  young  scientist  or 
philosopher.  The  great  question  of  creation, 
the  problem  how  the  various  species  of  plants 
and  animals  came  into  the  world,  and  how 
man  came  into  being,  did  not  exist  yet  in 

39 


Xast  TKRorfcs  on  Evolution, 

exact  science.     There  was  in  fact,  no  question 
of  it. 

Seventy-seven  years  ago  Alexander  von 
Humboldt  delivered,  in  this  very  spot,  the 
lectures  which  afterwards  made  up  his  famous 
work,  Cosmos,  the  Elements  of  a  Physical 
Description  of  the  World.  As  he  touched,  in 
passing,  the  obscure  problem  of  the  origin  of 
the  organic  population  of  our  planet,  he  could 
only  say  resignedly:  "The  mysterious  and 
unsolved  problem  of  how  things  came  to  be 
does  not  belong  to  the  empirical  province  of 
objective  research,  the  description  of  what  is." 
It  is  instructive  to  find  Johannes  Muller,  the 
greatest  of  German  biologists  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  speaking  thus  in  1852,  in  his  famous 
essay,  "On  the  Generation  of  Snails  in  Holo- 
thurians:"  "The  entrance  of  various  species 
of  animals  into  creation  is  certain — it  is  a  fact 
of  paleontology ;  but  it  is  supernatural 'as  long 
as  this  entrance  cannot  be  perceived  in  the 
act  and  become  an  element  of  observation." 
I  myself  had  a  number  of  remarkable  conver- 
sations with  Muller,  whom  I  put  at  the  head 

40 


Evolution  ant) 

of  all  my  distinguished  teachers,  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1854.  His  lectures  on  comparative 
anatomy  and  physiology — the  most  illuminat- 
ing and  stimulating  I  ever  heard — had  cap- 
tivated me  to  such  an  extent  that  I  asked  and 
obtained  his  permission  to  make  a  closer  study 
of  the  skeletons  and  other  preparations  in  his 
splendid  museum  of  comparative  anatomy 
(then  in  the  right  wing  of  the  buildings  of  the 
Berlin  University),  and  to  draw  them.  Muller 
(then  in  his  fifty-fourth  year)  used  to  spend  the 
Sunday  afternoon  alone  in  the  museum.  He 
would  walk  to  and  fro  for  hours  in  the  spacious 
rooms,  his  hands  behind  his  back,  buried  in 
thought  about  the  mysterious  affinities  of  the 
vertebrates,  the  " holy  enigma"  of  which  was 
so  forcibly  impressed  by  the  row  of  skeletons. 
Now  and  again  my  great  master  would  turn 
to  a  small  table  at  the  side,  at  which  I  (a  stu- 
dent of  twenty  years)  was  sitting  in  the  angle 
of  a  window,  making  conscientious  drawings 
of  the  skulls  of  mammals,  reptiles,  amphibi- 
ans, and  fishes. 

I  would  then  beg  him  to  explain  particularly 

41 


Xast  TKIlor&s  on  Evolution. 

difficult  points  in  anatomy,  and  once  I  ventured 
to  put  the  question:  "  Must  not  all  these  ver- 
tebrates, with  their  identity  in  internal  skeleton, 
in  spite  of  all  their  external  differences,  have 
come  originally  from  a  common  form  ?"  The 
great  master  nodded  his  head  thoughtfully, 
and  said :  "Ah,  if  we  we  only  knew  that ! 
If  ever  you  solve  that  riddle,  you  will  have 
accomplished  a  supreme  work."  Two  months 
afterwards,  in  September,  1854,  I  had  to  ac- 
company Miiller  to  Heligoland,  and  learned 
under  his  direction  the  beautiful  and  wonder- 
ful inhabitants  of  the  sea.  As  we  fished  to- 
gether in  the  sea,  and  caught  the  lovely  me- 
dusae, I  asked  him  how  it  was  possible  to 
explain  their  remarkable  alternation  of  gene- 
rations ;  if  the  medusae,  from  the  ova  of  which 
polyps  develop  to-day,  must  not  have  come 
originally  from  the  more  simply  organized 
polyps?  To  this  precocious  question,  I  re- 
ceived the  same  resigned  answer:  "Ah,  that 
is  a  very  obscure  problem  !  We  know  no- 
thing whatever  about  the  origin  of  species." 
Johannes  Miiller  was  certainly  one  of  the 

42 


Bvolution  anfc  Dogma* 

greatest  scientists  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
He  takes  rank  with  Cuvier,  Baer,  Lamarck, 
and  Darwin.  His  insight  was  profound  and 
penetrating,  his  philosophic  judgment  compre- 
hensive, and  his  mastery  of  the  vast  province 
of  biology  was  enormous.  Emil  du  Bois- 
Reymond  happily  compared  him,  in  his  fine 
commemorative  address,  to  Alexander  the 
Great,  whose  kingdom  was  divided  into  several 
independent  realms  at  his  death.  In  his  lec- 
tures and  works  Miiller  treated  no  less  than 
four  different  subjects,  for  which  four  separate 
chairs  were  founded  after  his  death  in  1858 — 
human  anatomy,  physiology,  pathological 
anatomy,  and  comparative  anatomy.  In  fact, 
we  ought  really  to  add  two  more  subjects — 
zoology  and  embryology.  Of  these,  also,  we 
learned  more  from  Miiller's  classic  lectures 
than  from  the  official  lectures  of  the  professors 
of  those  subjects.  The  great  master  died  in 
1858,  a  few  months  before  Charles  Darwin 
and  Alfred  R.  Wallace  made  their  first  com- 
munications on  their  new  theory  of  selection 
in  the  Journal  of  the  Linnaean  Society.  I  do 

43 


%ast  TKttorte  on  Evolution. 

not  doubt  in  the  least  that  this  surprising  an- 
swer of  the  riddle  of  creation  would  have  pro- 
foundly moved  Miiller,  and  have  been  fully 
admitted  by  him  on  mature  reflection. 

To  these  leading  masters  in  biology,  and  to 
all  other  anatomists,  physiologists,  zoologists, 
and  botanists  up  to  1858,  the  question  of  or- 
ganic creation  was  an  unsolved  problem ;  the 
great  majority  regarded  it  as  insoluble.  The 
theologians  and  their  allies,  the  metaphysici- 
ans, built  triumphantly  on  this  fact.  It  afforded 
a  clear  proof  of  the  limitations  of  reason  and 
science.  A  miracle  only  could  account  for  the 
origin  of  these  ingenious  and  carefully  de- 
signed organisms  ;  nothing  less  than  the  Di- 
vine wisdom  and  omnipotence  could  have 
brought  man  into  being.  But  this  general 
resignation  of  reason,  and  the  dominance  of 
supernatural  ideas  which  it  encouraged,  were 
somewhat  paradoxical  in  the  thirty  years  be- 
tween Lyell  and  Darwin  between  1830  and 
1859,  since  the  natural  evolution  of  the  earth, 
as  conceived  by  the  great  geologist,  had  come 
to  be  universally  recognized.  Since  the  earlier 

44 


Bvoiutton  anfc  Dogma. 

of  these  dates  the  iron  necessity  of  natural  law 
had  ruled  in  inorganic  nature,  in  the  formation 
of  the  mountains  and  the  movement  of  the 
heavenly  bodies.  In  organic  nature,  on  the 
contrary,  in  the  creation  and  the  life  of  animals 
and  plants,  people  saw  only  the  wisdom  and 
power  of  an  intelligent  Creator  and  Controller; 
in  other  words,  everything  was  ruled  by  me- 
chanical causality  in  the  inorganic  world,  but 
by  teleological  finality  in  the  realm  of  biology. 
Philosophy,  strictly  so  called,  paid  little  or 
no  attention  to  this  dilemma.  Absorbed  al- 
most exclusively  in  metaphysical  and  dia- 
lectical speculations,  it  looked  with  supreme 
contempt  or  indifference  on  the  enormous  pro- 
gress that  the  empirical  sciences  were  making. 
It  affected,  in  its  character  of  "  purely  mental 
science,"  to  build  up  the  world  out  of  its  own 
head,  and  to  have  no  need  of  the  splendid  ma- 
terial that  was  being  laboriously  gathered  by 
observation  and  experiment.  This  is  especi- 
ally true  of  Germany,  where  Hegel's  system 
of  "absolute  idealism"  had  secured  the  highest 
regard,  particularly  since  it  had  been  made 

45 


%ast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

obligatory  as  "the  royal  State-philosophy  of 
Prussia" — mainly  because,  according  to  He- 
gel, "in  the  State  the  Divine  will  itself  and 
the  monarchical  constitution  alone  represent 
the  development  of  reason ;  all  other  forms  of 
constitution  are  lower  stages  of  the  develop- 
ment of  reason."  Hegel's  abstruse  meta- 
physics has  also  been  greatly  appreciated  be- 
cause it  has  made  so  thorough  and  consistent 
a  use  of  the  idea  of  evolution.  But  this  pre- 
tended "evolution  of  reason"  floated  far  above 
real  nature  in  the  pure  ether  of  the  absolute 
spirit,  and  was  devoid  of  all  the  material  bal- 
last that  the  empirical  science  of  the  evolution 
of  the  world,  the  earth,  and  its  living  popula- 
tion, had  meantime  accumulated.  Moreover, 
it  is  well  known  how  Hegel  himself  declared, 
with  humorous  resignation,  that  only  one  of 
his  many  pupils  had  understood  him,  and  this 
one  had  misunderstood  him. 

From  the  higher  standpoint  of  general  cul- 
ture the  difficult  question  forces  itself  on  us : 
What  is  the  real  value  of  the  idea  of  evolution 
in  the  whole  realm  of  science  ?  We  are  bound 

•     46 


Evolution  anfc  Dogma. 

to  answer  that  it  varies  considerably.  The 
facts  of  the  evolution  of  the  individual,  or  of 
ontogeny,  were  easy  to  observe  and  grasp: 
the  evolution  of  the  crust  of  the  earth  and  of 
the  mountains  in  geology  seemed  to  have  an 
equally  sound  empirical  foundation;  the  phys- 
ical evolution  of  the  universe  seemed  to 
be  established  by  mathematical  speculation. 
There  was  no  longer  any  serious  question  of 
creation,  in  the  literal  sense,  of  the  deliberate 
action  of  a  personal  Creator,  in  these  great 
provinces.  But  this  made  people  cling  to  the 
idea  more  than  ever  in  regard  to  the  origin  of 
the  countless  species  of  animals  and  plants, 
and  especially  the  creation  of  man.  This  tran- 
scedental  problem  seemed  to  be  entirely  be- 
yond the  range  of  natural  development ;  and 
the  same  was  thought  of  the  question  of  the 
nature  and  origin  of  the  soul,  the  mystic  entity 
that  was  appropriated  by  metaphysical  specu- 
lation as  its  subject.  Charles  Darwin  suddenly 
brought  a  clear  light  into  this  dark  chaos  of 
contradictory  notions  in  1859.  His  epoch- 
making  work,  The  Origin  of  Species,  proved 

47 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

convincingly  that  this  historical  process  is  not 
a  supernatural  mystery,  but  a  physiological 
phenomenon ;  and  that  the  preservation  of  im- 
proved races  in  the  struggle  for  life  had  pro- 
duced, by  a  natural  evolution,  the  whole 
wondrous  world  of  organic  life. 

To-day,  when  evolution  is  almost  univer- 
sally recognized  in  biology,  when  thousands 
of  anatomic  and  physiological  works  are  based 
on  it  every  year,  the  new  generation  can  hardly 
form  an  idea  of  the  violent  resistance  that  was 
offered  to  Darwin's  theory  and  the  impassioned 
struggles  it  provoked.  In  the  first  place,  the 
Churches  at  once  raised  a  vigorous  protest ; 
they  rightly  regarded  their  new  antagonist  as 
the  deadly  enemy  of  the  legend  of  creation, 
and  saw  the  very  foundations  of  their  creed 
threatened.  The  Churches  found  a  powerful 
ally  in  the  dualistic  metaphysics  that  still  claims 
to  represent  the  real  "  idealist  philosophy"  at 
most  universities.  But  most  dangerous  of  all 
to  the  young  theory  was  the  violent  resistance 
it  met  almost  everywhere  in  its  own  province 

of  empirical  science.    The  prevailing  belief  in 

48 


Bvoiution  anfc  Bo^ma* 

the  fixity  and  the  independent  creation  of  the 
various  species  was  much  more  seriously  men- 
aced by  Darwin' stheory  than  it  had  been  by 
Lamarck's  transformism.  Lamarck  had  said 
substantially  the  same  thing  fifty  years  before, 
but  had  failed  to  convince  through  the  lack  of 
effective  evidence.  Many  scientists,  some  of 
great  distinction,  opposed  Darwin  because 
either  they  had  not  an  adequate  acquaintance 
with  the  whole  field  of  biology,  or  it  seemed 
to  them  that  his  bold  speculation  advanced 
too  far  from  the  secure  base  of  experience. 

When  Darwin's  work  appeared  in  1859,  an(^ 
fell  like  a  flash  of  lightning  on  the  dark  world 
of  official  biology,  I  was  engaged  in  a  scientific 
expedition  to  Sicily  and  taken  up  with  a  thor- 
ough study  of  the  graceful  radiolarians,  those 
wonderful  microscopic  marine  animals  that 
surpass  all  other  organisms  in  the  beauty  and 
variety  of  their  forms.  The  special  study  of 
this  remarkable  class  of  animals,  of  which  I 
afterwards  described  more  than  4,000  species, 
after  more  than  ten  years  of  research,  provided 
me  with  one  of  the  solid  foundation-stones  of 

49 


%ast  TRUorfcs  on  Evolution, 

my  Darwinian  ideas.  But  when  I  returned 
from  Messina  to  Berlin  in  the  spring  of  1860, 
I  knew  nothing  as  yet  of  Darwin's  achieve- 
ment I  merely  heard  from  my  friends  at  Ber- 
lin that  a  remarkable  work  by  a  crazy  English- 
man had  attracted  great  attention,  and  that 
it  turned  upside  down  all  orevious  ideas  as  to 
the  origin  of  species. 

I  soon  perceived  that  almost  all  the  experts 
at  Berlin — chief  amongst  them  were  the  fa- 
mous microscopist,  Ehrenberg;  the  anatomist, 
Reichert;  the  zoologist,  Peters ;  the  geologist, 
Beyrich — were  unanimous  in  their  condemna- 
tion of  Darwin.  The  brilliant  orator  of  the 
Berlin  Academy,  Emil  du  Bois-Reymond, 
hesitated.  He  recognized  that  the  theory  of 
evolution  was  the  only  natural  solution  of  the 
problem  of  creation ;  but  he  laughed  at  the 
application  of  it  as  a  poor  romance,  and  de- 
clared that  the  phylogenetic  inquiries  into  the 
relationship  of  the  various  species  had  about 
as  much  value  as  the  research  of  philologists 
into  the  genealogical  tree  of  the  Homeric  he- 
roes. The  distinguished  botanist,  Alexander 

50 


Evolution  anfc  2>o0ma* 

Braun,  stood  quite  alone  in  his  full  and  warm 
assent  to  the  theory  of  evolution.  I  found 
comfort  and  encouragement  with  this  dear 
and  respected  teacher,  when  I  was  deeply 
moved  by  the  first  reading  of  Darwin's  book, 
and  soon  completely  converted  to  his  views. 
In  Darwin's  great  and  harmonious  conception 
of  Nature,  and  his  convincing  establishment 
of  evolution,  I  had  an  answer  to  all  the  doubts 
that  had  beset  me  since  the  beginning  of  my 
biological  studies. 

My  famous  teacher,  Rudolf  Virchow,  whom 
I  had  met  at  Wiirtzburg  in  1852,  and  was 
soon  associated  with  in  the  most  friendly  re- 
lations as  special  pupil  and  admiring  assistant, 
played  a  very  curious  part  in  this  great  contro- 
versy. I  am,  I  think,  one  of  those  elderly  men 
who  have  followed  Virchow's  development,  as 
man  and  thinker,  with  the  greatest  interest 
during  the  last  fifty  years.  I  distinguish  three 
periods  in  his  psychological  metamorphoses. 
In  the  first  decade  of  his  academic  life,  from 
1847  to  1858,  mainly  at  Wurtzburg,  he  effected 
the  great  reform  of  medicine  that  culminated 

51 


Xast  TKttor&s  on  Evolution, 

brilliantly  in  his  cellular  pathology.  In  the 
following  twenty  years  (1858-1877)  he  was 
chiefly  occupied  with  politics  and  anthro- 
pology. He  was  at  first  favorable  to  Dar- 
winism, then  sceptical,  and  finally  rejected  it. 
His  powerful  and  determined  opposition  to  it 
dates  from  1877,  when,  in  his  famous  speech 
on  "The  Freedom  of  Science  in  the  Modern 
State/'  he  struck  a  heavy  blow  at  that  free- 
dom, denounced  the  theory  of  evolution  as 
dangerous  to  the  State,  and  demanded  its  ex- 
clusion from  the  schools.  This  remarkable 
metamorphosis  is  so  important,  and  has  had 
so  much  influence,  yet  has  been  so  erroneously 
described,  that  I  will  deal  with  it  somewhat 
fully  in  the  next  chapter,  especially  as  I  have 
then  to  treat  one  chief  problem,  the  descent  of 
man  from  the  ape.  For  the  moment,  I  will 
merely  recall  the  fact  that  in  Berlin,  the  "me- 
tropolis of  intelligence,"  as  it  has  been  called, 
the  theory  of  evolution,  now  generally  ac- 
cepted, met  with  a  more  stubborn  resistance 
than  in  most  of  our  other  leading  educational 
centres,  and  that  this  opposition  was  due  above 
all  to  the  powerful  authority  of  Virchow. 


]E\?olutton 

We  can  only  glance  briefly  here  at  the  victo- 
rious struggle  that  the  idea  of  evolution  has 
conducted  in  the  last  three  decades  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  violent  resistance 
that  Darwinism  encountered  nearly  every- 
where in  its  early  years  was  paralyzed  towards 
the  end  of  the  first  decade.  In  the  year  1866- 
1874  many  works  were  published  in  which 
not  only  were  the  foundations  of  the  theory 
scientifically  strengthened,  but  its  general  rec- 
ognition was  secured  by  popular  treatment 
of  the  subject.  I  made  the  first  attempt  in 
1866,  in  my  General  Morphology,  to  present 
connectedly  the  whole  subject  of  evolution  and 
make  it  the  foundation  of  a  consistent  Monistic 
philosophy;  and  I  then  gave  a  popular  sum- 
mary of  my  chief  conclusions  in  the  ten  edi- 
tions of  my  History  of  Creation.  I  n  my  Evolu- 
tion of  Man  I  made  the  first  attempt  to  apply 
the  principles  of  evolution  thoroughly  and 
consistently  to  man,  and  to  draw  up  a  hypo- 
thetical list  of  his  animal  ancestors.  The 
three  volumes  of  my  Systematic  Phytogeny 
(1894-1896)  contain  a  fuller  outline  of  a  natural 

53 


3Last  TKllorfcs  on  Bvoiution . 

classification  or  organisms  on  the  basis  of  their 
stem-history.  There  have  been  important 
contributions  to  the  science  of  evolution  in  all 
its  branches  in  the  Darwinian  periodical,  Cos- 
mos, since  1877;  and  a  number  of  admirable 
popular  works  helped  to  spread  the  system. 
However,  the  most  important  and  most 
welcome  advance  was  made  by  science 
when,  in  the  last  thirty  years,  the  idea  of 
evolution  penetrated  into  every  branch  of 
biology,  and  was  recognized  as  fundamental 
and  indispensable.  Thousands  of  new  dis- 
coveries and  observations  in  all  sections  of 
botany,  zoology,  protistology,  and  anthrop- 
ology, were  brought  forward  as  empirical 
evidence  of  evolution.  This  is  especially 
true  of  the  remarkable  progress  of  paleon- 
tology, comparative  anatomy,  and  embryolo- 
gy, but  it  applies  also  to  physiology,  chorol- 
ogy  (the  science  of  the  distribution  of  living 
things),  and  oecology  (the  description  of  the 
habits  of  animals).  How  much  our  horizon 
was  extended  by  these,  and  how  much  the 
unity  of  our  Monistic  system  gained,  can  be 

54 


Evolution  an&  Dogma. 

seen  in  any  modern  manual  of  biology.  If 
we  compare  them  with  those  that  gave  us 
extracts  of  natural  history  forty  or  fifty  years 
ago,  we  see  at  once  what  an  enormous  ad- 
vance has  taken  place.  Even  the  more 
remote  branches  of  anthropological  science, 
ethnography,  sociology,  ethics,  and  jurispru- 
dence, are  entering  into  closer  relations  with 
the  theory  of  evolution,  and  can  no  longer 
escape  its  influence.  In  view  of  all  this,  it  is 
ridiculous  for  theological  and  metaphysical 
journals  to  talk,  as  they  do,  of  the  failure  of 
evolution  and  "the  death-bed  of  Darwinism." 
Our  science  of  evolution  won  its  greatest 
triumph  when,  at  the  beginning  of  the  twen- 
tieth century,  its  most  powerful  opponents, 
the  Churches,  became  reconciled  to  it,  and 
endeavored  to  bring  their  dogmas  into  line 
with  it,  A  number  of  timid  attempts  to  do 
so  had  been  made  in  the  preceding  ten  years 
by  different  free-thinking  theologians  and 
philosophers,  but  without  much  success. 
The  distinction  of  accomplishing  this  in  a 
comprehensive  and  well-informed  manner 

55 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

was  reserved  for  a  Jesuit,  Father  Erich 
Wasmann  of  Luxemburg.  This  able  and 
learned  entomologist  had  already  earned 
some  recognition  in  zoology  by  a  series  of 
admirable  observations  on  the  life  of  ants, 
and  the  captives  that  they  always  keep  in 
their  homes,  certain  very  small  insects  which 
have  themselves  been  curiously  modified  by 
adaptation  to  their  peculiar  environment. 
He  showed  that  these  striking  modifications 
can  only  be  rationally  explained  by  descent 
from  other  free-living  species  of  insects. 
The  various  papers  in  which  Wasmann  gave 
a  thoroughly  Darwinian  explanation  of  the 
biological  phenomena  first  appeared  (1901- 
1903)  in  the  Catholic  perodical,  Stimmen  aus 
Maria- Laach,  and  are  now  being  collected 
in  a  special  work  entitled,  Modern  Biology 
and  the  Theory  of  Evolution. 

This  remarkable  book  of  Wasmann's  is  a 
master-piece  of  Jesuitical  sophistry.  It  real- 
ly consists  of  three  entirely  different  sections. 
The  first  third  gives,  in  the  introduction, 
what  is,  for  Catholics,  a  clear  and  instructive 

56 


Evolution  an&  2>ogma, 

account  of  modern  biology,  especially  the 
cell-theory,  and  the  theory  of  evolution 
(chapters  i.-viii).  The  second  third,  the 
ninth  chapter,  is  the  most  valuable  part  of 
the  work.  It  has  the  title :  "  The  Theory  of 
Fixity  or  the  Theory  of  Evolution?"  Here 
the  learned  entomologist  gives  an  interesting 
account  of  the  results  of  his  prolonged  stud- 
ies of  the  morphology  and  the  oecology  of 
the  ants  and  their  captives,  the  myrme- 
cophilae.  He  shows  impartially  and  convin- 
cingly that  these  complicated  and  remark- 
able phenomena  can  only  be  explained  by 
evolution,  and  that  the  older  doctrine  of  the 
fixity  and  independent  creation  of  the  various 
species  is  quite  untenable.  With  a  few 
changes  this  ninth  chapter  could  figure  as  a 
useful  part  of  a  work  by  Darwin  or  Weis- 
mann  or  some  other  evolutionist.  The  suc- 
ceeding chapter  (the  last  third)  is  flagrantly 
inconsistent  with  the  ninth.  It  deals  most 
absurdly  with  the  application  of  the  theory  of 
evolution  to  man.  The  reader  has  to  ask 
himself  whether  Wasmann  really  believes 

57 


Xast  TKftor&s  on  Evolution* 

these  confused  and  ridiculous  notions,  or 
whether  he  merely  aims  at  befogging  his 
readers,  and  so  preparing  the  way  for  the 
acceptance  of  the  conventional  creed. 

Wasmann's  book  has  been  well  criticised 
by  a  number  of  competent  students,  especi- 
ally by  Escherich  and  France.  While  fully 
recognizing  his  great  services,  they  insist 
very  strongly  on  the  great  mischief  wrought 
by  this  smuggling  of  the  Jesuitical  spirit  into 
biology.  Escherich  points  out  at  length  the 
glaring  inconsistencies  and  the  obvious  un- 
truths of  this  " ecclesiastical  evolution/'  He 
summarizes  his  criticism  in  the  words:  "If 
the  theory  of  evolution  can  really  be  recon- 
ciled with  the  dogmas  of  the  Church  only  in 
the  way  we  find  here,  Wasmann  has  clearly 
proved  that  any  such  reconciliation  is  impos- 
sible. Because  what  Wasmann  gives  here 
as  the  theory  of  evolution  is  a  thing  muti- 
lated beyond  recognition  and  incapable  of 
any  vitality."  He  tries,  like  a  good  Jesuit, 
to  prove  that  it  does  not  tend  to  undermine, 
but  to  give  a  firm  foundation  to  the  story  of 

58 


Evolution  anD  2Do0ma. 

supernatural  creation,  and  that  it  was  really 
not  Lamarck  and  Darwin,  but  St.  Augustin 
and  St.  Thomas  of  Aquin,  who  founded  the 
science  of  evolution.  "  God  does  not  interfere 
directly  in  the  order  of  Nature  when  he  can 
act  by  means  of  natural  causes."  Man  alone 
constitutes  a  remarkable  exception ;  because 
"  the  human  soul,  being  a  spiritual  entity, 
cannot  be  derived  from  matter  even  by  the 
Divine  omnipotence,  like  the  vital  forms  of 
plants  and  animals  "  (p.  299). 

In  an  instructive  article  on  "Jesuitical 
science"  (in  the  Frankfort  Frei  Wort,  No. 
22,  1904),  R.  H.  France  gives  an  interesting 
list  of  the  prominent  Jesuits  who  are  now  at 
work  in  the  various  branches  of  science. 
As  he  rightly  says,  the  danger  consists  "  in 
a  systematic  introduction  of  the  Jesuitical 
spirit  into  science,  a  persistent  perversion  of 
all  its  problems  and  solutions,  and  an  astute 
undermining  of  its  foundations ;  to  speak 
more  precisely,  the  danger  is  that  people  are 
not  sufficiently  conscious  of  it,  and  that  they, 
and  even  science  itself,  fall  into  the  cleverly 

59 


Xast  IKIlor&s  on  Evolution, 

prepared  pit  of  believing  that  there  is  such  a 
thing  as  Jesuitical  science,  the  results  of 
which  may  be  taken  seriously."1 

While  fully  recognizing  these  dangers,  I 
nevertheless  feel  that  Jesuit  Father  Was- 
mann,  and  his  colleagues,  have — unwittingly 
— done  a  very  great  service  to  the  progress 
of  pure  science.  The  Catholic  Church,  the 
most  powerful  and  widespread  of  the  Chris- 

1  The  eel-like  sophistry  of  the  Jesuits,  which  has  been 
brought  to  such  a  wonderful  pitch  in  their  political  sys- 
tem, cannot,  as  a  rule,  be  met  by  argument.  An  interesting 
illustration  of  this  was  given  by  Father  Wasmann  himself 
in  his  controversy  with  the  physician,  Dr.  Julian  Marcuse. 
The  "  scientific  "  Wasmann  had  gone  so  far  in  his  zeal  for 
religion  as  to  support  a  downright  swindle  of  a  "  miracu- 
lous cure"  in  honor  of  the  "  Mother  of  God  of  Oostacker  " 
(the  Belgian  Lourdes).  Dr.  Marcuse  succeeded  in  exposing 
the  whole  astounding  story  of  this  "  pious  fraud  "  (Deutsche 
Stimmen,  Berlin,  1903,  iv.  Jahrg.,  No.  20).  Instead  of  giving 
a  scientific  refutation,  the  Jesuit  replied  with  sophistic  per- 
version and  personal  invective  (Scientific  [?]  Supplement 
to  Germania,  Berlin,  1902,  No.  43,  and  1903,  No.  13).  In  his 
final  reply,  Dr.  Marcuse  said:  "I  have  accomplished  my 
object — to  let  thoughtful  people  see  once  more  the  kind  of 
ideas  that  are  found  in  the  world  of  dead  and  literal  faith, 
which  tries  to  put  the  crudest  superstition  and  reverence  for 
the  myth  of  miraculous  cures  in  the  place  of  science,  truth 
and  knowledge"  {Deutsche  Stimmen,  1903,  v.  Jahrgang, 
No.  3). 

60 


Evolution  anfc  Dogma* 

tian  sects,  sees  itself  compelled  to  capitulate 
to  the  idea  of  evolution.  It  embraces  the 
most  important  application  of  the  idea,  La- 
marck and  Darwin's  theory  of  descent,  which 
it  had  vigorously  combated  until  twenty 
years  ago.  It  does,  indeed,  mutilate  the 
great  tree,  cutting  off  its  roots  and  its  highest 
branch  ;  it  rejects  spontaneous  generation  or 
archigony  at  the  bottom,  and  the  descent  of 
man  from  animal  ancestors  above.  But  these 
exceptions  will  not  last.  Impartial  biology 
will  take  no  notice  of  them,  and  the  religious 
creed  will  at  length  determine  that  the  more 
complex  species  have  been  evolved  from  a 
series  of  simpler  forms  according  to  Darwin- 
ian principles.  The  belief  in  a  supernatural 
creation  is  restricted  to  the  production  of  the 
earliest  and  simplest  stem-forms,  from  which 
the  "  natural  species "  have  taken  their  ori- 
gin ;  Wasmann  gives  that  name  to  all  species 
that  are  demonstrably  descended  from  a 
common  stem-form ;  in  other  words,  to  what 
other  classifiers  call  " stems"  or  " phyla/' 
The  4,000  species  of  ants  in  his  system, 

61 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution, 

which  he  believes  to  be  genetically  related, 
are  comprised  by  him  in  one  "  natural  spe- 
cies.'* On  the  other  hand,  man  forms  one 
isolated  "  natural  species"  for  himself,  with- 
out any  connection  with  the  other  mammals. 
The  Jesuitical  sophistry  that  Wasmann 
betrays  in  this  ingenious  distinction  between 
"  systematic  and  natural  species "  is  also 
found  in  his  philosophic  "Thoughts  on  Evo- 
lution," (chap,  viii,)  his  distinction  between 
philosophic  and  scientific  evolution,  or  be- 
tween evolution  in  one  stem  and  in  several 
stems.  His  remarks  in  (chap,  vii,)  on  "  the 
cell  and  spontaneous  generation  "  are  simi- 
larly marred  by  sophistry.  The  question  of 
spontaneous  generation  or  archigony — that 
is  to  say,  of  the  first  appearance  of  organic 
life  on  the  earth,  is  one  of  the  most  difficult 
problems  in  biology,  one  of  those  in  which 
the  most  distinguished  students  betray  a 
striking  weakness  of  judgment.  Dr.  Heinrich 
Schmidt,  of  Jena,  has  lately  written  an  able 
and  popular  little  work  on  that  subject.  In 
his  Spontaneous  Generation  and  Prof.  Reinke 

62 


Solution  ant)  2>oama. 

(1903,)  he  has  shown  to  what  absurd  conse- 
quences the  ecclesiastical  ideas  lead  on  this 
very  question.  The  botanist  Reinke,  of  Kiel, 
is  now  regarded  amongst  religious  people  as 
the  chief  opponent  of  Darwinism  ;  for  many 
conservatives  this  is  because  he  is  a  member 
of  the  Prussian  Herrenhaus  (a  very  intelli- 
gent body,  of  course!)  Although  he  is  a 
strong  evangelical,  many  of  his  mystic  de- 
ductions agree  surprisingly  with  the  Catholic 
speculations  of  Father  Wasmann.  This  is 
especially  the  case  with  regard  to  spontane- 
ous generation.  They  both  declare  that  the 
first  appearance  of  life  must  be  traced  to  a 
miracle,  to  the  work  of  a  personal  deity, 
whom  Reinke  calls  the  "cosmic  intelligence." 
I  have  shown  the  unscientific  character  of 
these  notions  in  my  last  two  works,  The  Rid- 
dle of  the  Universe,  and  The  Wonders  of  Life. 
I  have  drawn  attention  especially  to  the 
widely  distributed  monera  of  the  chromacea 
class — organisms  of  the  simplest  type  con- 
ceivable, whose  whole  body  is  merely  an 

unnucleated,  green,  structureless  globule  of 

63 


SLast  TKaorfcs  on  Evolution* 

plasm  (Chroococcus) ;  their  whole  vital  activ- 
ity consists  of  growth  (by  forming  plasm) 
and  multiplication  (by  dividing  into  two.) 
There  is  little  theoretical  difficulty  in  con- 
ceiving the  origin  of  these  new  simple  monera 
from  inorganic  compounds  of  albumen,  or 
their  later  transformation  into  the  simplest 
nucleated  cells.  All  this,  and  a  good  deal 
more  that  will  not  fit  in  his  Jesuitical  frame, 
is  shrewdly  ignored  by  Wasmann. 

In  view  of  the  great  influence  that  Catholi- 
cism still  has  on  public  life  in  Germany, 
through  the  Centre  party,  this  change  of 
front  should  be  a  great  gain  to  education. 
Virchow  demanded  as  late  as  1877  that  the 
dangerous  doctrine  of  evolution  should  be 
excluded  from  the  schools.  The  Ministers 
of  Instruction  of  the  two  chief  German  States 
gratefully  adopted  this  warning  from  the 
leader  of  the  progressive  party,  forbade  the 
teaching  of  Darwinian  ideas,  and  made  every 
effort  to  check  the  spread  of  biological  knowl- 
edge. Now,  twenty-five  years  afterwards, 
the  Jesuits  come  forward,  and  demand  the 

64 


jBvolutton  anfc  Dogma. 

opposite.  They  recognize  openly  that  the 
hated  theory  of  evolution  is  established,  and 
try  to  reconcile  it  with  the  creed  !  What  an 
irony  of  history  1  And  we  find  much  the 
same  story  when  we  read  the  struggles  for 
freedom  of  thought  and  for  the  recognition  of 
evolution  in  the  other  educated  countries  of 
Europe. 

In  Italy,  its  cradle  and  home,  educated 
people  generally  look  upon  the  papacy  with 
the  most  profound  disdain.  I  have  spent 
many  years  in  Italy,  and  have  never  met  an 
educated  Italian  of  such  bigoted  and  narrow 
views  as  we  usually  find  amongst  educated 
German  Catholics — represented  with  success 
in  the  Reichstag  by  the  Centre  party.  It  is 
proof  enough  of  the  reactionary  character  of 
German  Catholics  that  the  Pope  himself  de- 
scribes them  as  his  most  vigorous  soldiers, 
and  points  them  out  as  models  to  the  faithful 
of  other  nations.  As  the  whole  history  of 
the  Roman  Church  shows,  the  charlatan  of 
the  Vatican  is  the  deadly  enemy  of  free  sci- 
ence and  free  teaching.  The  present  German 

65 


Xast  Tlfllorfcs  on  Evolution. 

Emperor  ought  to  regard  it  as  his  most  sa- 
cred duty  to  maintain  the  tradition  of  the 
Reformation,  and  to  promote  the  formation 
of  the  German  people  in  the  sense  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great.  Instead  of  this  we  have  to 
look  on  with  heavy  hearts  while  the  Em- 
peror, badly  advised  and  misled  by  those  in 
influence  above  him,  suffers  himself  to  be 
caught  closer  and  closer  in  the  net  of  the 
Catholic  clergy,  and  sacrifices  to  it  the  intel- 
ligence of  the  rising  generation.  In  Sep- 
tember, 1904,  the  Catholic  journals  announced 
triumphantly  that  the  adoption  of  Catholicism 
by  the  Emperor  and  his  Chancellor  was  close 
at  hand.1 

1  While  these  pages  are  in  the  press  the  journals  an- 
nounce a  fresh  humiliation  of  the  German  empire  that  will 
cause  great  grief.  On  the  gth  of  May  the  nation  celebrated 
the  centenary  of  the  death  of  Friedrich  Schiller.  With  rare 
unanimity  all  the  political  parties  of  Germany,  and  all  the 
German  associations  abroad,  came  together  to  do  honor  to 
the  great  poet  of  German  idealism.  Professor  Theobald 
Ziegler  delivered  a  very  fine  address  at  Strassburg  Univer- 
sity. The  Emperor,  who  happened  to  be  in  the  town,  was 
invited,  but  did  not  attend ;  instead  of  doing  so,  he  held  a 
military  parade  in  the  vicinity.  A  few  days  afterwards  he 
sat  at  table  with  the  German  Catholic  cardinals  and  bish- 

66 


Bvolution  an&  Dogma* 

The  firmness  of  the  belief  in  conventional 
dogmas,  which  hampers  the  progress  of 
rational  enlightenment  in  orthodox  Protes- 
tant circles  as  well  as  Catholic,  is  often 
admired  as  an  expression  of  the  deep  emo- 
tion of  the  German  people.  But  its  real 
source  is  their  confusion  of  thought  and  their 
credulity,  the  power  of  conservative  tradition, 
and  the  reactionary  state  of  political  educa- 
tion. While  our  schools  are  bent  under  the 
yoke  of  the  creeds,  those  of  our  neighbors 
are  free.  France,  the  pious  daughter  of  the 
Church,  gives  anxious  moments  to  her  ambi- 
tious mother.  She  is  breaking  the  chains  of 
Concordat,  and  taking  up  the  work  of  the 
Reformation.  In  Germany,  the  birthplace  of 
the  Reformation,  the  Reichstag  and  the 

ops,  amongst  them  being  the  fanatical  Bishop  Benzler,  who 
declared  that  a  Christian  cemetery  was  desecrated  by  the 
interment  of  a  Protestant.  At  these  festive  dinners  Ger_ 
man  Catholics  always  gave  the  first  toast  to  the  Pope,  the 
second  to  the  Emperor;  they  rejoice  at  present  that  the 
Emperor  and  the  Pope  are  allies.  But  the  whole  history  of 
the  papacy  (a  pitiful  caricature  of  the  ancient  Catholic 
faith)  shows  clearly  that  they  are  natural  and  irreconcilable 
enemies.  Either  emperor  must  rule  or  pope. 

67 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Bvoiution* 

Government  vie  with  each  other  in  smooth- 
ing the  paths  for  the  Jesuits,  and  fostering, 
instead  of  suppressing,  the  intolerant  spirit  of 
the  sectarian  school.  Let  us  hope  that  the 
latest  episode  in  the  history  of  evolution,  its 
recognition  by  Jesuitical  science,  will  bring 
about  the  reverse  of  what  they  intend — the 
substitution  of  rational  science  for  blind  faith. 


68 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE  STRUGGLE  OVER  OUR  GENEALOGI 
CAL  TREE. 

OUR  APE-RELATIVES  AND  THE  VERTEBRATE-STEM. 


EXPLANATION  OF  PLATE  II. 

SKELETONS    OF     FIVE    ATHROPOID    APES. 

These  skeletons  of  the  five  living  genera  of  anthropomor- 
pha  are  reduced  to  a  common  size,  in  order  to  show  better 
the  relative  proportions  of  the  various  parts.  The  human 
skeleton  is  ^Vth  natural  size,  the  gorilla  -f^th,  t^e  chipanzee 
|th,  the  orang  |th,  the  gibbon  Jth.  Young  specimens  of 
the  chimpanzee  and  orang  have  been  selected,  because  they 
approach  nearer  to  man  than  the  adult.  No  one  of  the 
living  anthropoid  apes  is  nearest  to  man  in  all  respects ; 
this  cannot  be  said  of  either  of  the  African  (gorilla  and 
chimpanzee)  or  the  Asiatic  (orang  and  gibbon).  This 
anatomic  fact  is  explained  phylogeneticallv  on  the  ground 
that  none  of  them  are  direct  ancestors  of  man  ;  they  repre- 
sent divergent  branches  of  the  stem,  of  which  man  is  the 
crown.  However,  the  small  gibbon  is  nearest  related  to 
the  hypothetical  common  ancestor  of  all  the  anthropomor- 
pha  to  which  we  give  the  name  of  Prothylobates.  Further 
information  will  be  found  in  my  Last  Link  and  Evolution  of 
Man  (chap,  xxiii.). 


70 


ERNST  HAECKEL  :    LAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION. 


PLATE  II. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE  STRUGGLE  OVER  OUR  GENEALOGI- 
CAL TREE. 

OUR  APE-RELATIVES  AND  THE  VERTEBRATE-STEM. 

IN  the  previous  chapter  I  tried  to  give  you 
a  general  idea  of  the  present  state  of  the 
controversy  in  regard  to  evolution.  Com- 
paring the  various  branches  of  thought  we 
found  that  the  older  mythological  ideas  of 
the  creation  of  the  world  were  driven  long 
ago  out  of  the  province  of  inorganic  science, 
but  that  they  did  not  yield  to  the  rational 
conception  of  natural  development  until  a 
much  later  date  in  the  field  of  organic  nature. 
Here  the  idea  of  evolution  did  not  prove 
completely  victorious  until  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century,  when  its  most  zealous 
and  dangerous  opponent,  the  Church,  was 
forced  to  admit  it.  Hence,  the  open  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  Jesuit,  Father  Wasmann, 

deserves  careful   attention,  and  we  may  look 

71 


Xast  TKttorbs  on  Evolution. 

forward  to  a  further  development.  If  his 
force  of  conviction  and  his  moral  courage 
are  strong  enough,  he  will  go  on  to  draw  the 
normal  conclusions  from  his  high  scientific 
attainments  and  leave  the  Catholic  Church,  as 
the  prominent  Jesuits,  Count  Hoensbroech 
and  the  able  geologist,  Professor  Renard  of 
Ghent,  one  of  the  workers  on  the  deep-sea 
deposits  in  the  Challenger  expedition,  have 
lately  done.  But  even  if  this  does  not  hap- 
pen, his  recognition  of  Darwinism,  in  the 
name  of  Christian  belief,  will  remain  a  land- 
mark in  the  history  of  evolution.  His  ingeni- 
ous and  very  Jesuitical  attempt  to  bring 
together  the  opposite  poles  will  have  no  very 
mischievous  effect;  it  will  rather  tend  to 
hasten  the  victory  of  the  scientific  conception 
of  evolution  over  the  mystic  beliefs  of  the 
Churches. 

You  will  see  this  more  clearly  if  we  go  on 
to  consider  the  important  special  problem  of 
the  "  descent  of  man  from  the  ape/'  and  its 
irreconcilability  with  the  conventional  belief 
that  God  made  man  according  to  His  own 

72 


©ur  Bpe*1Relativ>es  an&  tbe  iflertebrate^Stenu 

image.  That  this  ape  or  pithecoid  theory  is 
an  irresistible  deduction  from  the  general 
principle  of  evolution  was  clearly  recognized 
forty-five  years  ago,  when  Darwin's  work 
appeared,  by  the  shrewd  and  vigilant  theolo- 
gians ;  it  was  precisely  in  this  fact  that  they 
found  their  strongest  motive  for  vigorous 
resistance.  It  is  quite  clear.  Either  man 
was  brought  into  existence,  like  the  other 
animals,  by  a  special  creative  act,  as  Moses 
and  Linne  taught  (an  "embodied  idea  of  the 
Creator,"  as  the  famous  Agassiz  put  it  so 
late  as  1858) ;  or  he  has  been  developed 
naturally  from  a  series  of  mammal  ancestors, 
as  is  claimed  by  the  systems  of  Lamarck 
and  Darwin. 

In  view  of  the  very  great  importance  of 
this  pithecoid  theory,  we  will  cast  a  brief 
glance  at  its  founders  and  then  summarize 
the  proofs  in  support  of  it.  The  famous 
French  biologist,  Jean  Lamarck,  was  the 
first  scientist  definitely  to  affirm  the  descent 
of  man  from  the  ape  and  seek  to  give  scien- 
tific proof  of  it.  In  his  splendid  work,  fifty 

73 


2Last  Worfcs  on  Devolution. 

years  in  advance  of  his  time,  the  Philosophic 
Zoologique  (1809),  he  clearly  traced  the 
modifications  and  advances  that  must  have 
taken  place  in  the  transformation  of  the  man- 
like apes  (the  primate  forms  similar  to  the 
orang  and  the  chimpanzee) ;  the  adaptation  to 
walking  upright,  the  consequent  modification 
of  the  hands  and  feet,  and  later,  the  formation 
of  speech,  and  the  attainment  of  a  higher  de- 
gree of  intelligence.  Lamarck's  remarkable 
theory,  and  this  important  consequence  of  it, 
soon  fell  into  oblivion.  When  Darwin 
brought  evolution  to  the  front  again  fifty 
years  afterwards,  he  paid  no  attention  to  the 
special  conclusion.  He  was  content  to  make 
the  following  brief  prophetic  observation  in 
his  work:  "  Light  will  be  thrown  on  the  ori- 
gin and  the  history  of  man/*  Even  this 
innocent  remark  seemed  so  momentous  to 
the  first  German  translator  of  the  work, 
Bronn,  that  he  suppressed  it.  When  Dar- 
win was  asked  by  Wallace  whether  he  would 
not  go  more  fully  into  it,  he  replied :  "  I 
think  of  avoiding  the  whole  subject,  as  it  is 

74 


<§>ur  Bpe*1Relatives  anfc  tbe  lDertebrate*Stenu 

so  much  involved  in  prejudice;  though  I 
quite  admit  that  it  is  the  highest  and  most 
interesting  problem  for  the  thinker/' 

The  first  thorough  works  of  importance  on 
the  subject  appeared  in  1863.  Thomas  Hux- 
ley in  England,  and  Carl  Vogt  in  Germany, 
endeavored  to  show  that  the  descent  of  man 
from  the  ape  was  a  necessary  consequence  of 
Darwinism,  and  to  provide  an  empirical  base 
for  the  theory  by  every  available  argument. 
Huxley's  work  on  Man's  Place  in  Nature  was 
particularly  valuable.  He  first  gave  convinc- 
'ingly,  in  three  lectures,  the  empirical  evidence 
on  the  subject — the  natural  history  of  the  an- 
thropoid apes,  the  anatomical  and  embryo- 
logical  relations  of  man  to  the  next  lowest 
animals,  and  the  recently  discovered  fossil 
human  remains.  I  then  (1866)  made  the  first 
attempt  to  establish  the  theory  of  evolution 
comprehensively  by  research  in  anatomy  and 
embryology,  and  to  determine  the  chief  stages 
in  the  natural  classification  of  the  vertebrates 
that  must  have  been  passed  through  by  our 
earlier  vertebrate  ancestors.  Anthropology 

75 


%ast  TKHotfts  on  Evolution. 

thus  becomes  a  part  of  zoology.  In  my  His- 
tory of  Creation  I  further  developed  these 
early  evolutionary  sketches,  and  improvements 
were  made  in  the  successive  editions. 

In  the  meantime,  the  great  master,  Darwin, 
had  decided  to  deal  with  this  chief  evolution- 
ary problem  in  a  special  work.  The  two 
volumes  of  his  Descent  of  Man  appeared  in 
1871.  They  contained  an  able  discussion  of 
sexual  selection,  or  the  selective  influence  of 
sexual  love  and  high  psychic  activities  con- 
nected therewith,  and  their  significance  in  re- 
gard to  the  origin  of  man.  As  this  part  of 
Darwin's  work  was  afterwards  attacked  with 
particular  virulence,  I  will  say  that,  in  my 
opinion,  it  is  of  the  greatest  importance,  not 
only  for  the  general  theory  of  evolution,  but 
also  for  psychology,  anthropology,  and  aes- 
thetics. 

My  own  feeble  early  efforts  (1866),  not  only 
to  establish  the  descent  of  man  from  the  near- 
est related  apes,  but  also  to  determine  more 
precisely  the  long  series  of  our  earlier  and 
lower  vertebrate  ancestors,  had  not  at  all  satis- 

76 


©ut  Bpe*1Reiatfx>es  anfc  tbe  Iflertebrate^Stenu 

fied  me.  In  particular,  I  had  had  to  leave 
unanswered  in  my  General  Morphology  the 
very  interesting  question :  from  which  inver- 
tebrate animals  the  vertebrate  stem  originally 
came.  A  clear  and  unexpected  light  was 
thrown  on  it  some  time  afterwards  by  the  as- 
tounding discoveries  of  Kowalevsky,  which 
revealed  an  essential  agreement  in  embryonic 
development  between  the  lowest  vertebrate 
(Amphioxus)  and  a  lowly  tunicate  (Ascidia). 
In  the  succeeding  years,  the  numerous  dis- 
coveries in  connection  with  the  formation  of 
the  germinal  layers  in  different  animals  so 
much  enlarged  ourembryological  outlook  that 
I  was  able  to  prove  the  complete  homology 
of  the  two-lay ere&gastrula  (a  cup-shaped  em- 
bryonic form)  in  all  the  tissue-forming  animals 
(metazoa)  in  my  Monograph  on  the  Sponges. 
From  this  I  inferred,  in  virtue  of  the  biogenetic 
law,  the  common  descent  of  all  the  metazoa 
from  one  and  the  same  gastrula-shaped  stem- 
form,  the  gastrcza.  This  hypothetical  stem- 
form,  to  which  man's  earliest  multicellular  an- 
cestors also  belong,  was  afterwards  proved  by 

77 


Xast  lOlorfcs  on  Evolution. 

Monticelli's  observations  to  be  still  in  exist- 
ence. The  evolution  of  these  very  simple 
tissue-forming  animals  from  still  simpler  uni- 
cellular forms  {protozoa}  is  shown  by  the  cor- 
responding process  that  we  witness  in  what  is 
called  the  segmentation  of  the  ovum  or  gas- 
trulation,  in  the  development  of  the  two-lay- 
ered germ  from  the  single  cell  of  the  ovum. 
Encouraged  by  these  great  advances  of 
modern  phylogeny,  and  with  the  support  of 
many  new  discoveries  in  comparative  anatomy 
and  embryology,  in  which  a  number  of  dis- 
tinguished observers  were  at  work,  I  was  able 
in  1874  to  venture  on  the  first  attempt  to  trace 
continuously  the  whole  story  of  man's  evolu- 
tion. In  doing  so,  I  took  my  stand  on  the 
firm  ground  of  the  biogenetic  law,  seeking  to 
give  a  phylogenetic  cause,  for  each  fact  of 
embryology.  My  Evolution  of  Man,  which 
made  the  first  attempt  to  accomplish  this  diffi- 
cult task,  was  materially  improved  and  en- 
larged as  new  and  important  discoveries  were 
made.  The  latest  edition  (1903  [1904  in  Eng- 
lish]) contains  thirty  chapters  distributed  in 

78 


©ur  Hpe^lReiatives  anfc  tbe  li)ertebrate=Stenu 

two  volumes,  the  first  of  which  deals  with 
embryology  (or  ontogeny),  and  the  second 
with  the  development  of  species  (or  phylo- 
geny). 

Though  I  was  quite  conscious  that  there 
were  bound  to  be  gaps  and  weak  points  in 
these  first  attempts  to  frame  a  natural  anthro- 
pogeny,  I  had  hoped  they  would  have  some 
influence  on  modern  anthropology,  and  especi- 
ally that  the  first  sketches  of  a  genealogical  tree 
of  the  animal  world  would  prove  a  stimulus  to 
fresh  research  and  improvement.  In  this  I 
was  much  mistaken.  The  dominant  school 
of  anthropology,  especially  in  Germany,  de- 
clined to  suffer  the  introduction  of  the  theory 
of  evolution,  declaring  it  to  be  an  unfounded 
hypothesis,  and  described  our  carefully  pre- 
pared ancestral  trees  as  mere  figments.  This 
was  due,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  great  au- 
thority of  the  founder  and  president  (for  many 
years)  of  the  German  Anthropological  Society, 
Rudolf  Virchow,  as  I  briefly  pointed  out  in 
the  previous  chapter.  In  view  of  the  great 
regard  that  is  felt  for  this  distinguished  scien- 

79 


SLast  IKHorfcs  on  Evolution, 

tist,  and  the  extent  to  which  his  powerful  op- 
position prevented  the  spread  of  the  theory,  it 
is  necessary  to  deal  more  fully  with  his  posi- 
tion on  the  subject.  I  am  still  further  con- 
strained to  do  this  because  of  the  erroneous 
views  of  it  that  are  circulating,  and  my  own 
fifty  years'  acquaintance  with  my  eminent 
teacher  enables  me  to  put  them  right. 

Not  one  of  Virchow's  numerous  pupils  and 
friends  can  appreciate  more  than  I  do  his  real 
services  to  medical  science.  His  Cellular 
Pathology  (1858),  his  thorough  application  of 
the  cell-theory  to  the  science  of  disease,  is,  in 
my  opinion,  one  of  the  greatest  advances  made 
by  modern  medicine.  I  had  the  good  fortune 
to  begin  my  medical  studies  at  Wiirtzburg  in 
1852,  and  to  spend  six  valuable  terms  under 
the  personal  guidance  of  four  biologists  of  the 
first  rank — Albert  Kolliker,  Rudolf  Virchow, 
Franz  Leydig  and  Carl  Gegenbaur.  The 
great  stimulus  that  I  received  from  these  dis- 
tinguished masters  in  every  branch  of  com- 
parative and  microscopic  biology  was  the 

starting-point  of  my  whole  training  in  that 

80 


<S>ur  Hpe*lRelativ>es  anfc  tbe  tflertebrate^Stem. 

science,  and  enabled  me  subsequently  to  follow 
with  ease  the  higher  intellectual  flight  of  Jo- 
hannes Miiller.  From  Virchow  especially  I 
learned,  not  only  the  analytic  art  of  careful 
observation  and  judicious  appreciation  of  the 
detailed  facts  of  anatomy,  but  also  the  concep- 
tion of  the  whole  human  frame,  the  profound 
conviction  of  the  unity  of  our  nature,  the  in- 
separable connection  of  body  and  mind,  to 
which  Virchow  gave  a  fine  expression  in  his 
classic  essay  on  "The  Efforts  to  bring  about 
Unity  in  Scientific  Medicine"  (1849).  The 
leading  articles  which  he  wrote  at  that  time 
for  the  Journal  of  Pathological  Anatomy  and 
Physiology,  which  he  had  founded,  contain 
much  new  insight  into  the  wonders  of  life, 
and  a  number  of  excellent  general  reflections 
on  their  significance — pregnant  ideas  that  we 
can  make  direct  use  of  for  Monistic  purposes. 
In  the  controversy  that  broke  out  between 
empirical  rationalism  and  materialism  and 
the  older  vitalism  and  mysticism,  he  took  the 
side  of  the  former,  and  fought  together  with 
Jacob  Moleschott,  Carl  Vogt,  and  Ludwig 

81 


Xast  imiorfcs  on  Evolution. 

Biichner.  I  owe  the  firm  conviction  of  the 
unity  of  organic  and  inorganic  nature,  of  me- 
chanical character  of  all  vital  and  psychic  ac- 
tivity, which  I  have  always  held  to  be  the 
foundation  of  my  Monistic  system,  in  a  great 
measure  to  Virchow's  teaching  and  the  ex- 
haustive conversations  I  had  with  him  when 
I  was  his  assistant.  The  profound  views  of 
the  nature  of  the  cell  and  the  independent  in- 
dividuality of  these  elementary  organisms, 
which  he  advanced  in  his  great  work  Cellular 
Pathology,  remained  guiding  principles  for  me 
in  the  prolonged  studies  that  I  made  thirty 
years  afterwards  of  the  organization  of  the 
radiolaria  and  other  unicellular  protists;  and 
also  in  regard  to  the  theory  of  the  cell-soul, 
which  followed  naturally  from  the  psycho- 
logical study  of  it. 

His  life  at  Wiirtzburg  was  the  most  brilliant 
period  of  Virchow's  indefatigable  scientific 
labors.  A  change  took  place  when  he  re- 
moved to  Berlin  in  1856.  He  then  occupied 
himself  chiefly  with  political  and  social  and 
civic  interests.  In  the  last  respect  he  has  done 

82 


<§>ur  Hpe*1Reiatix>es  anD  tbe  IPertebrate^Stem. 

so  much  for  Berlin  and  the  welfare  of  the  Ger- 
man people  that  I  need  not  enlarge  on  it. 
Nor  will  I  go  into  his  self-sacrificing  and  often 
thankless  political  work  as  leader  of  the  pro- 
gressive party;  there  are  differences  of  opinion 
as  to  its  value.  But  we  must  carefully  exam- 
ine his  peculiar  attitude  towards  evolution, 
and  especially  its  chief  application,  the  ape- 
theory.  He  was  at  first  favorable  to  it,  then 
sceptical,  and  finally  decidedly  hostile. 

When  the  Lamarckian  theory  was  brought 
to  light  again  by  Darwin  in  1859,  many  thought 
that  it  was  Virchow's  vocation  to  take  the  lead 
in  defending  it.  He  had  made  a  thorough 
study  of  the  problem  of  heredity;  he  had  re- 
alized the  power  of  adaptation  through  his 
study  of  pathological  changes ;  and  he  had 
been  directed  to  the  great  question  of  the 
origin  of  man  by  his  anthropological  studies. 
He  was  at  that  time  regarded  as  a  determined 
opponent  of  all  dogmas ;  he  combated  tran- 
scendentalism either  in  the  form  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal creeds  or  anthropomorphism.  After  1862 
he  declared  that  "the  possibility  of  a  transition 

83 


3Last  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

from  species  to  species  was  a  necessity  of  sci- 
ence." When  I  opened  thefirst  public  discussion 
of  Darwinism  at  the  Stettin  scientific  congress 
in  1863,  Virchow  and  Alexander  Braun  were 
among  the  few  scientists  who  would  admit 
the  subject  to  be  important  and  deserving  of 
the  most  careful  study.  When  I  sent  to  him 
in  1865  two  lectures  that  I  had  delivered  at 
Jena  on  the  origin  and  genealogical  tree  of 
the  human  race,  he  willingly  received  them 
amongst  his  Collection  of  Popular  Scientific 
Lectures.  In  the  course  of  many  long  con- 
versations I  had  with  him  on  the  matter,  he 
agreed  with  me  in  the  main,  though  with  the 
prudent  reserve  and  cool  scepticism  that  char- 
acterized him.  He  adopts  the  same  moderate 
attitude  in  the  lecture  that  he  delivered  to  the 
Artisans'  Union  at  Berlin  in  1869  on  " Human 
and  Ape  Skulls." 

His  position  definitely  changed  in  regard 
to  Darwinism  from  1877  onward.  At  the 
Scientific  Congress  that  was  then  held  at  Mu- 
nich I  had,  at  the  pressing  request  of  my 
Munich  friends,  undertaken  the  first  address 

84 


©ur  Bpe*1Relatit>es  an&  tbe  Dertebrate^Stem, 

(on  1 8th  September)  on  "  Modern  Evolution 
in  Relation  to  the  whole  of  Science."  In  this 
address  I  had  substantially  advanced  the  same 
general  views  that  I  afterwards  enlarged  in 
my  Monism  Riddle  of  the  Universe,  and  Won- 
ders of  Life.  In  the  ultramontane  capital  of 
Bavaria,  in  sight  of  a  great  university  which 
emphatically  describes  itself  as  Catholic,  it  was 
somewhat  bold  to  make  such  a  confession  of 
faith.  The  deep  impression  that  it  had  made 
was  indicated  by  the  lively  manifestations  of 
assent  on  the  one  hand,  and  displeasure  on  the 
other,  that  were  at  once  made  in  the  Congress 
itself  and  in  the  Press.  On  the  following  day 
I  departed  for  Italy  (according  to  an  arrange- 
ment made  long  before).  Virchow  did  not 
come  to  Munich  until  two  days  afterwards, 
when  he  delivered  (on  22nd  September,  in  re- 
sponse to  entreaties  from  people  of  position 
and  influence)  his  famous  antagonistic  speech 
on  "The  Freedom  of  Science  in  the  Modern 
State."  The  gist  of  the  speech  was  that  this 
freedom  ought  to  be  restricted;  that  evolution 
is  an  unproved  hypothesis,  and  ought  not  to 

85 


Xast  IKHor&s  on  Evolution. 

be  taught  in  the  school  because  it  is  dangerous 
to  the  State:  "We  must  not  teach,"  he  said, 
"that  man  descends  from  the  ape  or  any  other 
animal."  In  1 849,  the  young  Monist,  Virchow, 
had  emphatically  declared  this  conviction, 
"that  he  would  never  be  induced  to  deny  the 
thesis  of  the  unity  of  human  nature  and  its 
consequences;"  now,  twenty-eight  years  af- 
terwards, the  prudent  Dualistic  politician  en- 
tirely denied  it.  He  had  formerly  taught  that 
all  the  bodily  and  mental  processes  in  the 
human  organism  depend  on  the  mechanism  of 
the  cell-life ;  now  he  declared  the  soul  to  be 
a  special  immaterial  entity.  But  the  crowning 
feature  of  this  reactionary  speech  was  his  com- 
promise with  the  Church,  which  he  had  fought 
so  vigorously  twenty  years  before. 

The  character  of  Virchow's  speech  at  Mu- 
nich is  best  seen  in  the  delight  with  which  it 
was  at  once  received  by  the  reactionary  and 
clerical  papers,  and  the  profound  concern  of 
all  Liberal  journals,  either  in  the  political  or 
the  religious  sense.  When  Darwin  read  the 
English  translation  of  the  speech  he — gener- 

86 


<Qur  Hpe  1Reiati\?es  anfc  tbe  Dertebrate*Stem» 

ally  so  gentle  in  his  judgments — wrote:  "Vir- 
chow's  conduct  is  shameful,  and  I  hope  he  will 
some  day  feel  the  shame."  In  1878,  I  made  a 
full  reply  to  it  in  my  Free  Science  and  Free 
Teaching,  in  which  I  collected  the  most  im- 
portant press  opinions  on  the  matter.1 

From  this  very  decided  turn  at  Munich  un- 
til his  death,  twenty-five  years  afterwards, 
Virchow  was  an  indefatigable  and  very  in- 
fluential opponent  of  evolution.  In  his  annual 
appearance  at  congresses  he  has  always  con- 
tested it,  and  has  obstinately  clung  to  his  state- 
ment that  "it  is  quite  certain  that  man  does 
not  descend  from  the  ape  or  any  other  animal." 
To  the  question:  "Whence  does  he  come, 
then  ?  "  he  had  no  answer,  and  retired  to  the 
resigned  position  of  the  Agnostic,  which  was 
common  before  Darwin's  time:  "We  do  not 
know  how  life  arose,  and  how  the  various 
species  came  into  the  world."  His  son-in-law, 

1  The  manuscript  1  tter  in  which  the  gentle  Darwin  ex- 
presses so  severe  a  judgment  on  Virchow  is  printed  in  my 
Cambridge  lecture,  The  Last  Link.  My  answer  to  Virchow's 
speech  is  contained  in  the  second  volume  of  my  Popular 
Lectures,  and  has  lately  appeared  in  the  Freie  Wort  (April, 
1905)- 

87 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

Professor  Rabl,  has  tried  to  draw  attention 
once  more  to  his  earlier  conception,  and  has 
declared  that  even  in  latter  years  Virchow 
often  recognized  the  truth  of  evolution  in  pri- 
vate conversation.  This  only  makes  it  the 
more  regrettable  that  he  always  said  the  con- 
trary in  public.  The  fact  remains  that  ever 
since  the  opponents  of  evolution,  especially 
the  reactionaries  and  clericals,  have  appealed 
to  the  authority  of  Virchow. 

The  wholly  reactionary  system  that  this 
led  to  has  been  well  described  by  Robert  Drill 
(1902)  in  his  Virchow  as  a  Reactionary.  How 
little  qualified  the  great  pathologist  was  to 
appreciate  the  scientific  based  of  the  pithecoid 
theory  is  clear  from  the  absurd  statement  he 
made,  in  the  opening  speech  of  the  Vienna 
Congress  of  Anthropologists,  in  1894,  that 
man  might  just  as  well  be  claimed  to  descend 
from  a  sheep  or  an  elephant  as  from  an  ape. 
Any  competent  zoologist  can  see  from  this  the 
little  knowledge  Virchow  had  of  systematic 
zoology  and  comparative  anatomy.  How- 
ever, he  retained  his  authority  as  president  of 

88 


an&  tbe  Dertebrate^Stem, 

the  German  Anthropological  Society,  which 
remained  impervious  to  Darwinian  ideas. 
Even  such  vigorous  controversialists  as  Carl 
Vogt,  and  such  scientific  partisans  of  the  ape- 
man  of  Neanderthal  as  Schaafhausen,  could 
make  no  impression.  Virchow's  authority 
was  equally  great  for  twenty  years  in  the  Ber- 
lin Press,  both  Liberal  and  Conservative. 
The  Kreutzzeitung  and  the  Evangelische  Kir- 
chenzeitung  were  delighted  that  ''the  learned 
progressist  was  conservative  in  the  best  sense 
of  the  word  as  regards  evolution/'  The  ultra- 
montane Germania  rejoiced  that  the  powerful 
representative  of  pure  science  had,  "with  a 
few  strokes  of  his  cudgel,  reduced  to  impo- 
tence "  the  absurd  ape-theory  and  its  chief 
protagonist,  Ernst  Haeckel.  The  National- 
Zeitung  could  not  sufficiently  thank  the  free- 
thinking  popular  leader  for  having  lifted  from 
us  for  ever  the  oppressive  mountain  of  the 
theory  of  simian  descent.  The  editor  of  the 
Volks- Zeitung,  Bernstein,  who  has  done  so 
much  for  the  spread  of.  knowledge  in  his  ex- 
cellent popular  manuals  of  science,  obstinately 

89 


%ast  TKHor&s  on  Evolution. 

refused  to  admit  articles  that  ventured  to  sup- 
port the  erroneous  ape-theory  "refuted"  by 
Virchow. 

It  would  take  up  too  much  space  to  attempt 
to  give  even  a  general  survey  of  the  remark- 
able and  enormous  literature  of  the  subject 
that  has  accumulated  in  the  last  three  decades 
in  the  shape  of  thousands  of  learned  treatises 
and  popular  articles.  The  greater  part  of  these 
works  have  been  written  under  the  influence  of 
conventional  religious  prejudice,  and  without 
the  necessary  acquaintance  with  the  subject, 
that  can  only  be  obtained  by  a  thorough  train- 
ing in  biology.  The  most  curious  feature  of 
them  is  that  most  of  the  authors  restrict  their 
genealogical  interests  to  the  most  manlike 
apes,  and  do  not  deal  with  their  origin,  or  with 
the  deeper  roots  of  our  common  ancestral  tree. 
They  do  not  see  the  wood  for  the  trees.  Yet 
it  is  far  easier  and  safer  to  penetrate  the  great 
mysteries  of  our  animal  origin,  if  we  look  at 
the  subject  from  the  higher  standpoint  of  ver- 
tebrate phylogeny  and  go  deeper  into  the  ear- 


Hpe*1Relatix>es  ant)  tbe  IDertebrate^Stem* 

Her  records  of  the  evolutionary  history  of  the 
vertebrates. 

Since  the  great  Lamarck  established  the 
idea  of  the  vertebrate  at  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  (1801),  and  his  Parisian 
colleague,  Cuvier,  shortly  afterwards  recog- 
nized the  vertebrates  as  one  of  his  four  chief 
animal  groups,  the  natural  unity  of  this  ad- 
vanced section  of  the  animal  world  has  not 
been  contested.  In  all  the  vertebrates,  from 
the  lowest  fishes  and  amphibians  up  to  the 
apes  and  man,  we  have  the  same  type  of  struc- 
ture, the  same  characteristic  disposition  and 
relations  of  the  chief  organs ;  and  they  differ 
materially  from  the  corresponding  features  in 
all  other  animals.  The  mysterious  affinities 
of  the  vertebrates  induced  Goethe,  140  years 
ago,  long  before  Cuvier,  to  make  prolonged 
and  laborious  studies  in  their  comparative 
anatomy  at  Jena  and  Weimar.  Just  as  he  had, 
in  his  Metamorphosis  of  Plants,  established 
the  unity  of  organization  by  means  of  the  leaf 
as  the  common  primitive  organ,  he,  in  the 
metamorphosis  of  the  vertebrates,  found  this 

91 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

common  element  in  the  vertebral  theory  of 
the  skull.  And  when  Cuvier  established  com- 
parative anatomy  as  an  independent  science, 
this  branch  of  biology  was  developed  to  such 
an  extent  by  the  classic  research  of  Johannes 
Miiller,  Carl  Gegenbaur,  Richard  Owen,  Thos. 
Huxley,  and  many  other  morphologists, 
that  Darwinism  found  its  most  powerful  weap- 
ons in  this  arsenal.  The  striking  differences 
of  external  form  and  internal  structure  that 
we  find  in  the  fishes,  anphibians,  reptiles, 
birds,  and  mammals,  are  due  to  adaptation  to 
the  various  uses  of  their  organs  and  their  en- 
vironments. On  the  other  hand,  the  astonish- 
ing agreement  in  their  typical  character,  that 
persists  in  spite  of  their  differences,  is  due  to 
inheritance  from  common  ancestors. 

The  evidence  thus  afforded  by  comparative 
anatomy  is  so  cogent  that  anyone  who  goes 
impartially  and  attentively  through  a  collec- 
tion of  skeletons  can  convince  himself  at 
once  of  the  morphological  unity  of  the  verte- 
brate stem.  The  evolutionary  evidence  of 
comparative  ontogeny,  or  embryology,  is 

92 


©ur  Bpe*1Relatfx>es  and  tbe  Dertebrate^Stem. 

less  easy  to  grasp  and  less  accessible,  but 
not  less  important.  It  came  to  light  at  a 
much  later  date,  and  its  extreme  value  was 
only  made  clear,  by  means  of  the  biogenetic 
law,  some  forty  years  ago.  It  shows  that 
every  vertebrate,  like  every  other  animal, 
develops  from  a  single  cell,  but  that  the 
course  of  its  embryonic  development  is  pecu- 
liar, and  characterized  by  embryonic  forms  that 
are  not  found  in  the  invertebrates.  We  find 
in  them  especially  the  chordula,  or  chorda- 
larva,  a  very  simple  worm-shaped  embryonic 
form,  without  limbs,  head,  or  higher  sense- 
organs;  the  body  consists  merely  of  six  very 
simple  primitive  organs.  From  these  are 
developed  steadily  the  hundreds  of  different 
bones,  muscles,  and  other  organs  that  we 
afterwards  distinguish  in  the  mature  verte- 
brate. The  remarkable  and  very  complex 
course  of  this  embryonic  development  is 
essentially  the  same  in  man  and  the  ape, 
and  in  the  amphibians  and  fishes.  We  see 
in  it,  in  accordance  with  the  biogenetic  law  a 
new  and  important  witness  to  the  common 

93 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Bvolutton. 

descent  of  all  vertebrates  from  a  single  primi- 
tive form,  the  chordoea. 

But,  important  as  these  arguments  of  com- 
parative  embryology   are,  one   needs  many 
years  study  in   the  unfamiliar  and   difficult 
province  of  embryology  before  one  can  real- 
ize their  evolutionary  force.     There   are,  in 
fact,  not  a  few  embryologists  (especially  of 
the  modern  school  of  experimental  embry- 
ology) who  do  not  succeed  in  doing  so.     It 
is  otherwise  with  the  palpable  proofs  that  we 
take   from  a  remote   science,    paleontology. 
The  remarkable  fossil  remains  and  impres- 
sions of  extinct  animals  and  plants  give  us 
directly  the  historical  evidence  we  need  to 
understand   the   successive   appearance   and 
disappearance    of    the    various   species   and 
groups.      Geology  has  firmly  established  the 
chronological  order  of  the  sedimentary  rocks, 
which  have  been  successively  formed  of  mud 
at  the  floor  of  the  ocean,  and  has  deduced 
their  age  from  the  thickness  of  the  strata, 
and  determined  the  relative  date  of  their  for- 
mation.    The  vast  period  during  which  or- 

94 


Hpe*1Relati\?e0  anfc  tbe 

ganic  life  has  been  developing  on  the  earth 
runs  to  many  million  years.  The  number  is 
variously  estimated  at  less  than  a  hundred 
or  at  several  hundred  million  years.1  If  we 
take  the  smaller  number  of  200  million  years, 
we  find  them  distributed  amongst  the  five 
chief  periods  of  the  earth's  organic  develop- 
ment in  such  a  way  that  the  earlier  or  arche- 
ozoic  period  absorbs  nearly  one-half.  As 
the  sedimentary  rocks  of  this  period,  chiefly 
neisses  and  crystalline  schists,  are  in  a 
metamorphosed  condition,  the  fossil  remains 
in  them  are  unrecognizable.  In  the  next 
succeeding  strata  of  the  paleozoic  period  we 
find  the  earliest  remains  of  fossilized  verte- 
brates, Silurian  primitive  fishes  (selachii)  and 
ganoids.  These  are  followed,  in  the  Devo- 
nian system,  by  the  first  dipneust  fishes  (a 
transitional  form  from  the  fishes  to  the 
amphibia).  In  the  next,  the  Carboniferous 
system,  we  find  the  first  terrestial  or  four- 

1  In  his  presidential  speech  at  the  last  meeting  of  the 
British  Association,  Professor  Darwin  said  :  "It  does  not 
seem  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  500  to  1,000  million 
years  may  have  elapsed  since  the  birth  of  the  moon." 
[Trans.] 

95 


Xast  TCHorfcs  on  Evolution* 

footed  vertebrates — amphibians  of  the  order 
of  the  stegocephala.  A  little  later,  in  the 
Permian  rocks,  the  earliest  amniotes,  lowly, 
lizard-like  reptiles  (tocosauria)  make  their 
appearance;  the  warm-blooded  birds  and 
mammals  are  still  wanting.  We  have  the 
first  traces  of  the  mammals  in  the  Triassic, 
the  earliest  sedimentary  rocks  of  the  meso- 
zoic  age ;  these  are  of  the  monotreme  sub- 
class (pantotheria  and  allotheria).  They  are 
succeeded  by  the  first  marsupials  (prodidel- 
phia)  in  the  Jurassic,  the  ancestral  forms  of 
the  placentals  (mallotheria),  in  the  Creta- 
ceous. See  p.  165. 

But  the  richest  development  of  the  mam- 
mal class  takes  place  in  the  next  or  Tertiary 
age.  In  the  course  of  its  four  periods — the 
eocene,  oligocene,  miocene,  and  pliocene — 
the  mammal  species  increase  steadily  in  num- 
ber, variety,  and  complexity,  down  to  the 
present  time.  From  the  lowest  common  an- 
cestral group  of  the  placentals  proceed  our 
divergent  branches,  the  legions  of  the  car- 

nassia,    rodents,    ungulates,    and    primates. 

96 


Bpe*lRelatfx>es  ano  tbe  tt)ertebrate*Stem. 

The  primate  legion  surpasses  all  the  rest.  In 
this  Linne  long  ago  included  the  lemurs, 
apes,  and  man.  The  historical  order  in 
which  the  various  stages  of  vertebrate  devel- 
opment make  their  successive  appearance 
corresponds  entirely  to  the  morphological 
order  of  their  advance  in  organization,  as  we 
have  learned  it  from  the  study  of  compara- 
tive anatomy  and  embryology. 

These  paleontological  facts  are  among  the 
most  important  proofs  of  the  descent  of  man 
from  a  long  series  of  higher  and  lower  verte- 
brates. There  is  no  other  explanation  pos- 
sible except  evolution  for  the  chronological 
succession  of  these  classes,  which  is  in  perfect 
harmony  with  the  morphological  and  sys- 
tematic distribution.  The  anti-evolutionists 
have  not  even  attempted  to  give  any  other 
explanation.  The  fishes  dipneusts,  amphi- 
bians, reptiles,  monotremes,  marsupials,  pla- 
centals,  lemurs,  apes,  anthropoid  apes,  and 
ape-men  (pithecanthropi),  are  inseparable 
links  of  a  long  ancestral  chain,  of  which  the 
last  and  most  perfect  link  is  man.  (Cf.  the 
tables  pp.  166-168). 


Xast  Tlfllorfcs  on  Evolution. 

One  of  the  paleontological  facts  I  have 
quoted,  namely,  the  late  appearance  of  the 
mammal  class  in  geology — is  particularly  im- 
portant. This  most  advanced  group  of  the 
vertebrates  comes  on  the  stage  in  the  Triassic 
period,  in  the  second  and  shorter  half  of  the 
organic  history  of  the  earth.  It  is  represented 
only  by  low  and  small  forms  in  the  whole  of 
the  mesozoic  age,  during  the  domination  of 
the  reptiles.  Throughout  this  long  period, 
which  is  estimated  by  some  geologists  at  8- 1 1 , 
by  others  at  20  or  more,  million  years,  the 
dominant  reptile  class  developed  its  many  re- 
markable and  curious  forms;  there  were  swim- 
mingmarine  reptiles  (halisauria),  flying  reptiles 
(pterosauria),  and  colossal  land  reptiles  (dino- 
sauria).  It  was  much  later,  in  the  Tertiary 
period,  that  the  mammal  class  attained  the 
wealth  of  large  and  advanced  placental  forms 
that  secured  its  predominance  over  this  more 
recent  period. 

The  many  and  thorough  investigations 
made  during  the  last  few  decades  into  the  an- 
cestral history  of  the  mammals  have  convinced 

98 


tbe  lt>ertebrate*Stenu 

all  zoologists  who  were  engaged  in  them  that 
they  may  be  traced  to  a  common  root.  All 
the  mammals,  from  the  lowest  monotremes 
and  marsupials  to  the  ape  and  man,  have  a 
large  number  of  striking  characteristics  in 
common,  and  these  distinguish  them  from  all 
other  vertebrates :  the  hair  and  glands  of  the 
skin,  the  feeding  of  the  young  with  the  moth- 
er's milk,  the  peculiar  formation  of  the  lower 
jaw  and  the  ear-bones  connected  therewith, 
and  other  features  in  the  structure  of  the  skull; 
also,  the  possession  of  a  knee-cap  (patella), 
and  the  loss  of  the  nucleus  in  the  red  blood- 
cells.  Further,  the  complete  diaphragm,  which 
entirely  separates  the  pectoral  cavity  from  the 
abdominal,  is  only  found  in  the  mammals ;  in 
all  the  other  vertebrates  there  is  still  an  open 
communication  between  the  two  cavities.  The 
monophyletic  (or  single)  origin  of  the  whole 
mammalian  class  is  therefore  now  regarded 
by  all  competent  experts  as  an  established 
fact. 

In  the  face  of  this  important  fact,  what  is 
called  the  " ape-question"  loses  a  good  deal 

99 


Xast  TKHorbs  on  Evolution* 

of  the  importance  that  was  formerly  ascribed 
to  it.  All  the  momentous  consequences  that 
follow  from  it  in  regard  to  our  human  nature, 
our  past  and  future,  and  our  bodily  and  psychic 
life,  remain  undisturbed  whether  we  derive 
man  directly  from  one  of  the  primates,  an  ape 
or  lemur,  or  from  some  other  branch,  some 
unknown  lower  form,  of  the  mammalian  stem. 
It  is  important  to  point  this  out,  because  cer- 
tain dangerous  attempts  have  been  made  lately 
by  Jesuitical  zoologists  and  zoological  Jesuits 
to  cause  fresh  confusion  on  the  matter. 

In  a  richly  illustrated  and  widely  read  work 
that  Hans  Kraemer  published  a  year  ago, 
under  the  title,  The  Universe  and  Man,  an 
able  and  learned  anthropologist,  Professor 
Klaatsch  of  Heidelberg  deals  with  "the  origin 
and  development  of  the  human  race,"  and  ad- 
mirably describes  the  primitive  history  of  man 
and  his  civilization.  However,  he  denounces 
the  idea  of  man's  descent  from  the  ape  as 
"irrational,  narrow-minded,  and  false;"  he 
grounds  this  severe  censure  on  the  fact  that 
none  of  the  living  apes  can  be  the  ancestor  of 


100 


<S>ur  Bpe*1Relati\>es  an&  tbe  IDertebrate^Stem, 

humanity.  But  no  competent  scientist  had 
ever  said  anything  so  foolish.  If  we  look  closer 
into  this  fight  with  windmills,  we  find  that 
Klaatsch  holds  substantially  the  same  view  of 
the  pithecoid  theory  as  I  have  done  since  1866. 
He  says  expressly:  "The  three  anthropoid 
apes,  the  gorilla,  chimpanzee,  and  orang,  seem 
to  diverge  from  a  common  root,  which  was 
near  to  that  of  the  gibbon  and  man/'  I  had 
long  ago  given  the  name  archiprimas  to  this 
single  hypothetical  root-form  of  the  primates, 
which  he  calls  the  "primatoid."  It  lived  in 
the  earliest  part  of  the  Tertiary  period,  and 
had  probably  been  developed  in  the  Cretace- 
ous from  older  mammals.  The  very  forced 
and  unnatural  hypothesis  by  means  of  which 
Klaatsch  goes  on  to  make  the  primates  depart 
very  widely  from  the  other  mammals,  seems 
to  me  to  be  quite  untenable,  like  the  similar 
hypothesis  that  Alsberg,  Wilser,  and  other 
anthropologists  who  deny  our  pithecoid  de- 
scent, have  lately  advanced. 

All  these  attempts  have  a  common  object — 
to  save  man's  privileged  position  in  Nature, 


101 


Xast  TOorfcs  on  Evolution. 

to  widen  as  much  as  possible  the  gulf  between 
him  and  the  rest  of  the  mammals,  and  to  con- 
ceal his  real  origin.  It  is  the  familar  tendency 
of  the  parvenu,  which  we  so  often  notice  in 
the  aristocratic  sons  of  energetic  men  who 
have  won  a  high  position  by  their  own  exer- 
tions. This  sort  of  vanity  is  acceptable  enough 
to  the  ruling  powers  and  the  Churches,  be- 
cause it  tends  to  support  their  own  fossilized 
pretensions  to  a  " Divine  image''  in  man  and 
a  special  " Divine  grace"  in  princes.  The 
zoologist  or  anthropologist  who  studies  our 
genealogy  in  a  strictly  scientific  spirit  takes 
no  more  notice  of  these  tendencies  than  of  the 
Almanack  de  Gotha.  He  seeks  to  discover 
the  naked  truth,  as  it  is  yielded  by  the  great 
results  of  modern  science,  in  which  there  is  no 
longer  any  doubt  that  man  is  really  a  descend- 
ant of  the  ape — that  is  to  say,  of  a  long  ex- 
tinct anthropoid  ape.  As  has  been  pointed 
out  over  and  over  again  by  distinguished  sup- 
porters of  this  opinion,  the  proofs  of  it  are  ex- 
ceptionally clear  and  simple — much  clearer 
and  simpler  than  they  are  in  regard  to  many 

102 


©ut  Hpe^lReiattves  ant)  tbe  lt)ertebrate*Stenu 

other  mammals.  Thus,  for  instance,  the  origin 
of  the  elephants,  the  armadilloes,  the  sirena,  or 
the  whales,  is  a  much  more  difficult  problem 
than  the  origin  of  man. 

When  Huxley  published  .his  powerful  essay 
on  "  Man's  Place  in  Nature"  in  1863,  he  gave 
it  a  frontispiece  showing  the  skeletons  of  man 
and  the  four  living  anthropoid  apes,  the  Asiatic 
orang  and  gibbon,  and  the  African  chimpanzee 
and  gorilla.  Plate  II.  in  the  present  work 
differs  from  this  in  giving  two  young  speci- 
mens of  the  orang  and  the  chimpanzee,  and 
raising  their  size  to  correspond  with  the  other 
three  skeletons.  Candid  comparison  of  these 
five  skeletons  shows  that  they  are  not  only 
very  like  each  other  generally,  but  are  identical 
in  the  structure,  arrangement,  and  connection 
of  all  the  parts.  The  same  200  bones  com- 
pose the  skeleton  in  man  and  in  the  four  tail- 
less anthropoid  apes,  our  nearest  relatives. 
The  same  300  muscles  serve  to  move  the 
various  parts  of  the  skeleton.  The  same  hair 
covers  the  skin ;  the  same  mammary  glands 
provide  food  for  the  young.  The  same  four- 

103 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Bvoluttotu 

chambered  heart  acts  as  central  pump  of  the 
circulation ;  the  same  32  teeth  are  found  in 
our  jaws ;  the  same  reproductive  organs  main- 
tain the  species;  the  same  groups  of  neurona 
or  ganglionic  cells  compose  the  wondrous 
structure  of  the  brain,  and  accomplish  that 
highest  function  of  the  plasm  which  we  call 
the  soul,  and  many  still  believe  to  be  an  im- 
mortal entity.  Huxley  has  thoroughly  estab- 
lished this  profound  truth,  and  by  further 
comparison  with  the  lower  apes  and  lemurs 
he  came  to  formulate  his  important  pithe- 
cometra  principle :  ' '  Whatever  organ  we  take, 
the  differences  between  man  and  the  anthro- 
poid apes  are  slighter  than  the  corresponding 
differences  between  the  latter  and  the  lower 
apes."  If  we  make  a  superficial  comparison 
of  our  skeletons  of  the  anthropomorpha,  we 
certainly  notice  a  few  salient  differences  in  the 
size  of  the  various  parts ;  but  these  are  purely 
quantitative,  and  are  due  to  differences  in 
growth,  which  in  turn  are  caused  by  adap- 
tation to  different  environments.  There  are,  as 
is  well  known,  similar  differences  between 

104 


<S>ur  Hpe*1Relatit>es  anfc  tbe  Iflertebrate^Stem. 

human  beings ;  their  arms  are  sometimes  long, 
sometimes  short;  the  forehead  may  be  high 
or  low,  the  hair  thick  or  thin,  and  so  on. 

These  anatomic  proofs  of  the  pithecoid 
theory  are  most  happily  supplemented  and 
confirmed  by  certain  recent  brilliant  dis- 
coveries in  physiology.  Chief  amongst  these 
are  the  famous  experiments  of  Dr.  Hans  Frie- 
denthal  at  Berlin.  He  showed  that  the  human 
blood  acts  poisonously  on  and  decomposes 
the  blood  of  the  lower  apes  and  other  mam- 
mals, but  has  not  that  effect  on  the  blood  of 
the  anthropoid  apes.1 

From  previous  transfusion  experiments  it 
had  been  learned  that  the  affinity  of  mammals 
is  connected  to  a  certain  extent  with  their 
chemical  blood-relationship.  If  the  living 
blood  of  two  nearly  related  animals  of  the 
same  family,  such  as  the  dog  and  fox,  or  the 
rabbit  and  the  hare,  is  mixed  together,  the 
living  blood-cells  of  each  species  remain  un- 
influenced. But  if  we  mix  the  blood  of  the 

1  See  account  of  similar  experiments  in  the  Lancet,  i8th 
January,  1902.     [Trans.] 

105 


%ast  IKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

dog  and  the  rabbit,  or  the  fox  and  the  hare,  a 
struggle  for  life  immediately  takes  place  be- 
tween the  two  kinds  of  blood-cells.  The 
watery  fluid  or  serum  destroys  the  blood-cells 
of  the  rodent,  and  vice  versa.  It  is  the  same 
with  specimens  of  the  blood  of  the  various 
primates.  The  blood  of  the  lower  apes  and 
lemurs,  which  are  close  to  the  common  root  of 
the  primate  stem,  has  a  destructive  effect  on 
the  blood  of  the  anthropoid  apes  and  man,  and 
vice  versa.  On  the  other  hand,  the  human 
blood  has  no  injurious  effect  when  it  is  mixed 
with  that  of  the  anthropoid  apes. 

In  recent  years  these  interesting  experi- 
ments have  been  continued  by  other  physiol- 
ogists and  physicians,  such  as  Professor 
Uhlenhuth  at  Greifswald  and  Nuttall  at  Lon- 
don, and  they  have  proved  directly  the  blood- 
relationship  of  various  mammals.  Nuttall 
studied  them  carefully  in  900  different  kinds 
of  blood,  which  he  tested  by  16,000  reactions. 
He  traced  the  graduation  of  affinity  to  the 
lowest  apes  of  the  New  World;  and  Uhlen- 
huth continued  as  far  as  the  lemurs.  By  these 

106 


©ur  Bpe*lRetatt\?e0  ano  tbe  Iflertebrate^Steiru 

results  the  affinity  of  man  and  the  anthropoid 
apes,  long  established  by  anatomy,  has  now 
been  proved  physiologically  to  be  in  real 
"blood-relationship."  * 

Not  less  important  are  the  embryological 
discoveries  of  the  deceased  zoologist,  Emil 
Selenka.  He  made  two  long  journeys  to  the 
East  Indies,  in  order  to  study  on  the  spot  the 
embryology  of  the  Asiatic  anthropoid  apes, 
the  orang  and  gibbon.  By  means  of  a  num- 
ber of  embryos  that  he  collected  he  showed 
that  certain  remarkable  peculiarities  in  the 
formation  of  the  placenta,  that  had  up  to  that 
time  been  considered  as  exclusively  human, 
and  regarded  as  a  special  distinction  of  our 
species,  were  found  in  just  the  same  way  in 
the  closely  related  anthropoid  apes,  though 
not  in  the  rest  of  the  apes.  On  the  ground  of 
these  and  other  facts,  I  maintain  that  the  de- 
scent of  man  from  extinct  Tertiary  anthropoid 
apes  is  proved  just  as  plainly  as  the  descent 

1  Wasmann  meets  these  convincing  experiments  with 
mere  Jesuitical  sophistry.  Of  the  same  character  is  his 
attack  on  my  Evolution  of  Man,  and  on  the  instructive  work 
of  Robert  Wiedersheim,  Man's  Structure  is  a  Witness  to  his 
Past. 

107 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  J6\>oluttotu 

of  birds  from  reptiles,  or  the  descent  of  reptiles 
from  amphibians,  which  no  zoologist  hesitates 
to  admit  to-day.  The  relationship  is  as  close 
as  was  claimed  by  my  former  fellow-student, 
the  Berlin  anatomist,  Robert  Hartmann  (with 
whom  I  sat  at  the  feet  of  Johannes  Miiller 
fifty  years  ago),  in  his  admirable  work  on  the 
anthropoid  apes  (1883).  He  proposed  to  di- 
vide the  order  of  primates  into  two  families, 
fas  Pritnatii  (man  and  the  anthropoid  apes), 
and  simiana  (the  real  apes,  the  catarrhine  or 
eastern,  and  the  platyrrhine  or  western  apes). 
Since  the  Dutch  physician,  Eugen  Dubois, 
discovered  the  famous  remains  of  the  fossil  ape- 
man  (pithecanthropus  erectus]  eleven  years 
ago  in  Java,  and  thus  brought  to  light  "the 
missing  link,"  a  large  number  of  works  have 
been  published  on  this  very  interesting  group 
of  the  primates.  In  this  connection  we  may 
particularly  note  the  demonstration  by  the 
Strassburg  anatomist,  Gustav  Schwalbe,  that 
the  previously  discovered  Neanderthal  skull 
belongs  to  an  extinct  species  of  man,  which 
was  midway  between  the  pithecanthropus  and 

108 


fbe  Iflertebrate^Stem. 

the  true  human  being — the  homo  primigenus. 
After  a  very  careful  examination,  Schwalbe  at 
the  same  time  refuted  all  the  biassed  objections 
that  Virchow  had  made  to  these  and  other 
fossil  discoveries,  trying  to  represent  them  as 
pathological  abnormalities.  In  all  the  import- 
ant relics  of  fossil  men  that  prove  our  descent 
from  anthropoid  apes  Virchow  saw  patho- 
logical modifications,  due  to  unsound  habits, 
gout,  rickets,  or  other  diseases  of  the  dwellers 
in  the  diluvial  caves.  He  tried  in  every  way 
to  impair  the  force  of  the  arguments  for  our 
primate  affinity.  So  in  the  controversy  over 
the  pithecanthropus  he  raised  the  most  im- 
probable conjectures,  merely  for  the  purpose 
of  destroying  its  significance  as  a  real  link  be- 
tween the  anthropoid  apes  and  man. 

Even  now,  in  the  controversy  over  this  im- 
portant ape-question,  amateurs  and  biassed 
anthropologists  often  repeat  the  false  statement 
that  the  gap  between  man  and  the  anthropoid 
ape  is  not'yet  filled  up  and  the  "missing  link" 
not  yet  discovered.  This  is  a  most  perverse 
statement,  and  can  only  arise  either  from  ig- 

109 


Xast  Words  on  JEvoiutfon, 

norance  of  the  anatomical,  embryological,  and 
paleontological  facts,  or  incompetence  to  inter- 
pret them  aright  As  a  fact,  the  morphological 
chain  that  stretches  from  the  lemurs  to  the 
earlier  western  apes,  from  these  to  the  eastern 
tailed  apes,  and  to  the  tailless  anthropoid  apes, 
and  from  these  direct  to  man,  is  now  uninter- 
rupted and  clear.  It  would  be  more  plausible 
to  speak  of  missing  links  between  the  earliest 
lemurs  and  their  marsupial  ancestors,  or  be- 
tween the  latter  and  their  monotreme  ancestors. 
But  even  these  gaps  are  unimportant,  because 
comparative  anatomy  and  embryology,  with 
the  support  of  paleontology,  have  dissipated 
all  doubt  as  to  the  unity  of  the  mammalian 
stem.  It  is  ridiculous  to  expect  paleontology 
to  furnish  an  unbroken  series  of  positive  data, 
when  we  remember  how  scanty  and  imperfect 
its  material  is. 

I  cannot  go  further  here  into  the  interest- 
ing recent  research  in  regard  to  special 
aspects  of  our  simian  descent ;  nor  would  it 
greatly  advance  our  object,  because  all  the 
general  conclusions  as  to  man's  primate 


no 


<S>ur  Hpe*1Reiatix>es  anfc  tbe  Dertebrate^Stem. 

descent  remain  intact,  whichever  way  we 
construct  hypothetically  the  special  lines  of 
simian  evolution.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is 
interesting  for  us  to  see  how  the  most  recent 
form  of  Darwinism,  so  happily  described  by 
Escherich  as  "ecclesiastical  evolution,"  stands 
in  regard  to  these  great  questions.  What 
does  its  astutest  representative,  Father  Erich 
Wasmann,  say  about  them?  The  tenth 
chapter  of  his  work,  in  which  he  deals  at 
length  with  "  the  application  of  the  theory  of 
evolution  to  man,"  is  a  masterpiece  of  Jesu- 
itical science,  calculated  to  throw  the  clearest 
truths  into  such  confusion  and  so  to  misrep- 
resent all  discoveries  as  to  prevent  any 
reader  from  forming  a  clear  idea  of  them. 
When  we  compare  this  tenth  chapter  with 
the  ninth,  in  which  Wasmann  represents  the 
theory  of  evolution  as  an  irresistible  truth  on 
the  strength  of  his  own  able  studies,  we  can 
hardly  believe  that  they  both  came  from  the 
same  pen — or,  rather,  we  can  only  under- 
stand when  we  recollect  the  rule  of  the 
Jesuit  Congregation:  "The  end  justifies  the 


Morfcs  on  Evolution, 

means."    Untruth  is  permitted  and  meritorious 
in  the  service  of  God  and  his  Church. 

The  Jesuitical  sophistry  that  Wasmann 
employs  in  order  to  save  man's  unique  posi- 
tion in  Nature,  and  to  prove  that  he  was 
immediately  created  by  God,  culminates  in 
the  antithesis  of  his  two  natures.  The 
"purely  zoological  conception  of  man,"  which 
has  been  established  beyond  question  by  the 
anatomical  and  embryological  comparison 
with  the  ape,  is  said  to  fail  because  it  does 
not  take  into  account  the  chief  feature,  his 
"mental  life."  It  is  "psychology  that  is 
best  fitted  to  deal  with  the  nature  and  origin 
of  man."  All  the  facts  of  anatomy  and  em- 
bryology that  I  have  gathered  together  in 
my  Evolution  of  Man  in  proof  of  the  series 
of  his  ancestors  are  either  ignored  or  mis- 
construed and  made  ridiculous  by  Wasmann. 
The  same  is  done  with  the  instructive  facts 
of  anthropology,  especially  with  the  rudi- 
mentary organs,  which  Robert  Wiedersheim 
has  quoted  in  his  Man's  Structure  as  a  Wit- 
ness to  His  Past.  It  is  clear  that  the  Jesuit 


112 


Hpe*1Relati\>es  ant)  tbe  iDertebrate^Stem, 

writer  lacks  competence  in  this  department ; 
that  he  has  only  a  superficial  and  inadequate 
acquaintance  with  comparative  anatomy  and 
embryology.  If  Wasmann  had  studied  the 
morphology  and  physiology  of  the  mammals 
as  thoroughly  as  those  of  the  ants,  he  would 
have  concluded,  if  he  were  impartial,  that  it 
is  just  as  necessary  to  admit  a  monophyletic 
(or  single)  origin  for  the  former  as  for  the 
latter.  .  If,  in  Wasmann's  opinion,  the  4,000 
species  of  ants  form  a  single  "  natural  sys- 
tem " — that  is  to  say,  descend  from  one  orig- 
inal species — it  is  just  as  necessary  to  admit 
the  same  hypothesis  for  the  6,000  (2,400  liv- 
ing and  3,600  fossil)  species  of  mammals,  in- 
cluding the  human  species. 

The  reserve  strictures  that  I  have  passed 
on  the  sophisms  and  trickery  of  this  "ecclesi- 
astical evolution"  are  not  directed  against  the 
person  and  the  character  of  Father  Wasmann, 
but  the  Jesuitical  system  which  he  represents. 
I  do  not  doubt  that  this  able  naturalist  (who 
is  personally  unknown  to  me)  has  written  his 
book  in  good  faith,  and  has  an  honorable  am- 


%ast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

bition  to  reconcile  the  irreconcilable  contra- 
dictions between  natural  evolution  and  the 
story  of  supernatural  creation.  But  this  rec- 
onciliation of  reason  and  superstition  is  only 
possible  at  the  price  of  a  sacrifice  of  the  reason 
itself.  We  find  this  in  the  case  of  all  the 
other  Jesuits — Fathers  Cathrein,  Braun,  Bes- 
mer,  Cornet,  Linsmeier,  and  Muckermann — 
whose  ambiguous  "Jesuitical  science"  is  aptly 
dealt  with  in  the  article  of  R.  H.  France  that 
I  mentioned  before  (No.  22  of  the  Freie  Wort, 
1 6th  February,  1904,  Frankfort). 

This  interesting  attempt  of  Father  Was- 
mann's  does  not  stand  alone.  Signs  are  mul- 
tiplying that  the  Church  militant  is  about  to 
enter  on  a  systematic  campaign.  I  heard  from 
Vienna  on  the  iyth  of  February,  that  on  the 
previous  day  (which  happened  to  be  my  birth- 
day), a  Jesuit,  Father  Giese,  had,  in  a  well- 
received  address,  admitted  not  only  evolution 
in  general,  but  even  in  its  application  to  man, 
and  declared  it  to  be  reconcilable  with  Catholic 
dogmas — and  this  at  a  crowded  meeting  of 
"catechists  !  "  It  is  important  to  note  that  in 

114 


©ur  Bpe*1Relatix>es  an&  tbe  Dertebrate^Stem. 

a  new  Catholic  cyclopaedia,  Benzinger's  Li- 
brary of  Science,  the  first  three  volumes  (issued 
at  Einsiedeln  and  Cologne,  1904)  deal  very 
fully  and  ably  with  the  chief  problems  of  evo- 
lution: the  first  with  the  formation  of  the 
earth,  the  second  with  spontaneous  generation, 
the  third  with  the  theory  of  descent.  The 
author  of  them,  Father  M.  Gander,  makes 
most  remarkable  concessions  to  our  theory, 
and  endeavors  to  show  that  they  are  not  incon- 
sistent with  the  Bible  or  the  dogmatic  trea- 
tises of  the  chief  fathers  and  school-men.  But, 
though  there  is  a  profuse  expenditure  of  so- 
phistical logic  in  these  Jesuitical  efforts,  Gan- 
der will  hardly  succeed  in  misleading  thought- 
ful people.  One  of  his  characteristic  positions 
is  that  spontaneous  generation  (as  the  devel- 
opment of  organized  living  things  by  purely 
material  processes)  is  inconceivable,  but  that 
it  might  be  made  possible  "by  a  special  Di- 
vine arrangement."  In  regard  to  the  descent 
of  man  from  other  animals  (which  he  grants), 
he  makes  the  reserve  that  the  soul  must  in 

"5 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

any  case  have  been  produced  by  a  special 
creative  act. 

It  would  be  useless  to  go  through  the  in- 
numerable fallacies  and  untruths  of  these 
modern  Jesuits  in  detail,  and  point  out  the 
rational  and  scientific  reply.  The  vast  power 
of  this  most  dangerous  religious  congregation 
consists  precisely  in  its  device  of  accepting 
one  part  of  science  in  order  to  destroy  the 
other  part  more  effectively  with  it.  Their 
masterly  act  of  sophistry,  their  equivocal  "pro- 
babilism,"  their  medacious  "reservatio  men- 
talis,"  the  principle  that  the  higher  aim  sancti- 
fies the  worst  means,  the  pernicious  casuistry 
of  Liguori  and  Gury,  the  cynicism  with  which 
they  turn  the  holiest  principles  to  the  grati- 
fication of  their  ambition,  have  impressed  on 
the  Jesuits  that  black  character  that  Carl 
Hoensbroech  has  so  well  exposed  recently. 

The  great  dangers  that  menace  real  science, 
owing  to  this  smuggling  into  it  of  the  Jesu- 
itical spirit,  must  not  be  undervalued.  They 
have  been  well  pointed  out  by  France,  Esche- 
rich,  and  others.  They  are  all  the  greater  in 

116 


<S>ur  Hpe*1Relatt\>es  ant>  tDe  Dertebrate^Stem. 


Germany  at  the  present  time,  as  the  Govern- 
ment and  the  Reichstag  are  working  together 
to  prepare  the  way  for  the  Jesuits,  and  to  yield  a 
most  pernicious  influence  on  the  school  to 
these  deadly  enemies  of  the  free  spirit  of  the 
country.  However,  we  will  hope  that  thi 
clerical  reaction  represents  only  a  passing 
episode  in  modern  history.  We  trust  that 
one  permanent  result  of  it  will  be  the  recog- 
nition, in  principle,  even  by  the  Jesuits,  of  the 
great  idea  of  evolution.  We  may  then  rest 
assured  that  its  most  important  consequence, 
the  descent  of  man  from  other  primate  forms, 
will  press  on  victoriously,  and  soon  be  recog- 
nized as  a  beneficent  and  hopeful  truth. 


117 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE    CONTROVERSY    OVER   THE    SOUL. 

THE  IDEAS  OF  IMMORTALITY  AND  GOD. 


119 


EXPLANATION   OF   PLATE   III. 

EMBRYOS  OF  THREE  MAMMALS  AT  THREE   CORRESPONDING 
STAGES   OF   DEVELOPMENT. 

THE  embryos  of  man  (M),  the  anthropoid  ape  (gibbon  G), 
and  the  bat  (rhinolophus,  B)  can  hardly  be  distinguished  in 
the  earlier  stage  (the  upper  row),  although  the  five  cerebral 
vesicles,  the  gill-clefts,  and  the  three  higher  sense-organs 
are  already  visible.  On  the  curved  dorsal  surface  we  see 
the  sections  of  the  primitive  vertebrae.  Even  later,  when 
the  two  pairs  of  limbs  have  appeared  in  the  form  of  roundish 
fins  (the  middle  row),  the  differences  are  not  great.  It  is 
not  until  a  further  development  of  the  limbs  and  head  has 
taken  place  (lowest  row)  that  the  characteristic  forms  are 
clearly  seen.  It  is  particularly  notable  that  the  primitive 
brain,  the  organ  of  the  mind,  with  its  five  cerebral  vesicles, 
is  the  same  in  all. 


120 


ERNST  HAECKEL:    LAST  WORDS  ON  EVOLUTION.  PLATE  III. 

EMBRYOS  OF  THREE   MAMMALS 
(At  three  corresponding  stages  of  development}. 


=  BAT  (Rhinolophus)         G  =  GIBBON  (Hylobates)          M  =  MAN  (Homo) 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE    CONTROVERSY    OVER   THE    SOUL. 

THE  IDEAS  OF  IMMORTALITY  AND  GOD. 

THOUGH  it  was  my  original  intention  to 
deliver  only  two  lectures,  I  have  been 
moved  by  several  reasons  to  add  a  supple- 
mentary one.  In  the  first  place,  I  notice  with 
regret  that  I  have  been  compelled  by  pressure 
of  time  to  leave  untouched  in  my  earlier  lec- 
tures, or  to  treat  very  inadequately,  several 
important  points  in  my  theme;  there  is,  in 
particular,  the  very  important  question  of  the 
nature  of  the  soul.  In  the  second  place,  I  have 
been  convinced  by  the  many  contradictory 
press-notices  during  the  last  few  days  that 
many  of  my  incomplete  observations  have 
been  misunderstood  or  misinterpreted.  And, 
thirdly,  it  seemed  advisable  to  give  a  brief  and 
clear  summary  of  the  whole  subject  in  this 
farewell  lecture,  to  take  a  short  survey  of  the 


121 


Slast  1Kaort>3  on  Evolution. 

past,  present  and  future  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, and  especially  its  relation  to  the  three 
great  questions  of  personal  immortality,  the 
freedom  of  the  will,  and  the  personality  of 
God. 

I  must  claim  the  reader's  patience  and  in- 
dulgence even  to  a  greater  extent  than  in  the 
previous  chapters,  as  the  subject  is  one  of  the 
most  difficult  and  obscure  that  the  human 
mind  approaches.  I  have  dealt  at  length  in 
my  recent  works,  The  Riddle  of  the  Universe 
and  7 he  Wonders  of  Life,  with  the  contro- 
versial questions  of  biology  that  I  treat  cur- 
sorily here.  But  I  would  like  to  put  before 
you  now,  in  a  general  survey,  the  powerful  ar- 
guments that  modern  science  employs  against 
the  prevailing  superstition  in  regard  to  evolu- 
tion, and  to  show  that  the  Monistic  system 
throws  a  clear  light  on  the  great  questions  of 
God  and  the  world,  the  soul  and  life. 

In  the  previous  chapters  I  have  tried  to  give 
a  general  idea  of  the  present  state  of  the  theory 
of  evolution  and  its  victorious  struggle  with 
the  older  legend  of  creation.  We  have  seen 

122 


ZTbe  Hfceas  ot  Hmmottalitp  ant> 

that  even  the  most  advanced  organism,  man, 
was  not  brought  into  being  by  a  creative  act, 
but  gradually  developed  from  a  long  series  of 
mammal  ancestors.  We  also  saw  that  the 
most  man-like  mammals,  the  anthropoid  apes, 
have  substantially  the  same  structure  as  man, 
and  that  the  evolution  of  the  latter  from  the 
former  can  now  be  regarded  as  a  fully  estab- 
lished hypothesis,  or,  rather,  an  historical  fact. 
But  in  this  study  we  had  in  view  mainly  the 
structure  of  the  body  and  its  various  organs. 
We  touched  very  briefly  on  the  evolution  of 
the  human  mind,  or  the  immaterial  soul  that 
dwells  in  the  body  for  a  time,  according  to  a 
venerable  tradition.  To-day  we  turn  chiefly 
to  the  development  of  the  soul,  and  consider 
whether  man's  mental  development  is  con- 
trolled by  the  same  natural  laws  as  that  of  his 
body,  and  whether  it  also  is  inseparately  bound 
up  with  that  of  the  rest  of  the  mammals. 

At  the  very  threshold  of  this  difficult  prov- 
ince we  encounter  the  curious  fact  that  there 
are  two  radically  distinct  tendencies  in  psy- 
chology at  our  universities  to-day.  On  one 

123 


Xast  TKHor&8  on  Evolution* 

side  we  have  the  metaphysical  and  professional 
psychologists.  They  still  cling  to  the  older 
view  that  man's  soul  is  a  special  entity,  a 
unique  independent  individuality,  which  dwells 
for  a  time  only  in  the  mortal  frame,  leaving  it 
and  living  on  as  an  immortal  spirit  after  death. 
This  dualistic  theory  is  connected  with  the 
doctrine  of  most  religions,  and  owes  its  high 
authority  to  the  fact  that  it  is  associated  with 
the  most  important  ethical,  social,  and  practical 
interests.  Plato  gave  prominence  to  the  idea 
of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  in  philosophy 
long  ago.  Descartes  at  a  later  date  gave 
emphasis  to  it  by  ascribing  a  true  soul  to  man 
alone  and  refusing  it  to  the  animals. 

This  metaphysical  psychology,  which  ruled 
alone  for  a  considerable  period,  began  to  be 
opposed  in  the  eighteenth,  and  still  more  in 
the  nineteenth,  century  by  comparative  psy- 
chology. An  impartial  comparison  of  the  psy- 
chic processes  in  the  higher  and  lower  animals 
proved  that  there  were  numerous  transitions 
and  gradations.  A  long  series  of  intermediate 
stages  connects  the  psychic  life  of  the  higher 

124 


Ufceas  of  flmmortaiits  anfc 

animals  with  that  of  man  on  the  one  side,  and 
that  of  the  lower  animals  on  the  other.  There 
was  no  such  thing  as  a  sharp  dividing  line,  as 
Descartes  supposed. 

But  the  greatest  blow  was  dealt  at  the  pre- 
dominant metaphysical  conception  of  the  life 
of  the  soul  thirty  years  ago  by  the  new  methods 
otpsychophysics.  By  means  of  a  series  of  able 
experiments  the  physiologists,  Theodor  Fech- 
ner  and  Ernst  Heinrich  Weber  of  Leipsic, 
showed  that  an  important  part  of  the  mental 
activity  can  be  measured  and  expressed  in 
mathematical  formulae  just  as  well  as  other 
physiological  processes,  such  as  muscular  con- 
tractions. Thus  the  laws  of  physics  control  a 
part  of  the  life  of  the  soul  just  as  absolutely  as 
they  do  the  phenomena  of  inorganic  nature. 
It  is  true  that  psychophysics  has  only  partially 
realized  the  very  high  expectations  that  were 
entertained  in  regard  to  its  Monistic  signifi- 
cance ;  but  the  fact  remains  that  a  part  of  the 
mental  life  is  just  as  unconditionally  ruled  by 
physical  laws  as  any  other  natural  phenomena. 

Thus  physiological  psychology  was  raised  by 

125 


%ast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

psychophysics  to  the  rank  of  a  physical  and, 
in  principle,  exact  science.  But  it  had  already 
obtained  solid  foundations  in  other  provinces 
of  biology.  Comparative  psychology  had 
traced  connectedly  the  long  gradation  from 
man  to  the  higher  animals,  from  these  to  the 
lower,  and  so  on  down  to  the  very  lowest. 
At  the  lowest  stage  it  found  those  remarkable 
beings,  invisible  with  the  naked  eye,  that  were 
discovered  in  stagnant  water  everywhere  after 
the  invention  of  the  microscope  (in  the  second 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century)  and  called 
"infusoria."  They  were  first  accurately  de- 
scribed and  classified  by  Gottfried  Ehrenberg, 
the  famous  Berlin  microscopist.  In  1838  he 
published  a  large  and  beautiful  work,  illustrat- 
ing on  64  folio  pages  the  whole  realm  of  mi- 
croscopic life ;  and  this  is  still  the  base  of  all 
studies  of  the  protists.  Ehrenberg  was  a  very 
ardent  and  imaginative  observer,  and  suc- 
ceeded in  communicating  his  zeal  for  the  study 
of  microscopic  organisms  to  his  pupils.  I  still 
recall  with  pleasure  the  stimulating  excursions 
that  I  made  fifty  years  ago  (in  the  summer  of 

126 


TTbe  fffceas  of  Hmmortaiits  an& 

1854)  with  my  teacher  Ehrenberg,  and  a  few 
other  pupils — including  my  student-friend, 
Ferdinand  von  Richthofen,  the  famous  geog- 
rapher— to  the  Zoological  Gardens  at  Berlin. 
Equipped  with  fine  nets  and  small  glasses,  we 
fished  in  the  ponds  of  the  Zoological  Gardens 
and  in  the  Spree,  and  caught  thousands  of  in- 
visible micro-organisms,  which  then  richly 
rewarded  our  curiosity  by  the  beautiful  forms 
and  mysterious  movements  they  disclosed 
under  the  microscope. 

The  way  in  which  Ehrenberg  explained  to 
us  the  structure  and  the  vital  movements  of 
his  infusoria  was  very  curious.  Misled  by 
the  comparison  of  the  real  infusoria  with  the 
microscopic  but  highly  organized  rotifers,  he 
had  formed  the  idea  that  all  animals  are  alike 
advanced  in  organization,  and  had  indicated 
this  erroneous  theory  in  the  very  title  of  his 
work :  The  Infusoria  as  Perfect  Organisms : 
a  Glance  at  the  Deeper  Life  of  Organic  Nature. 
He  though  he  could  detect  in  the  simplest 
infusoria  the  same  distinct  organs  as  in  the 
higher  animals — stomach,  heart,  ovaries,  kid- 

127 


TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

neys,  muscles,  and  nerves — and  he  interpreted 
their  psychic  life  on  the  same  peculiar  principle 
of  equally  advanced  organization. 

Ehrenberg's  theory  of  life  was  entirely 
wrong,  and  was  radically  destroyed  in  the 
hour  of  its  birth  (1838)  by  the  cell-theory 
which  was  then  formulated,  and  to  which  he 
never  became  reconciled.  Once  Matthias 
Schleiden  had  shown  the  composition  of  all 
the  plants,  tissues,  and  organs  from  micro- 
scopic cells,  the  last  structural  elements  of  the 
living  organism,  and  Theodor  Schwann  had 
done  the  same  for  the  animal  body,  the  theory 
attained  such  an  importance  that  Kolliker  and 
Leydig  based  on  it  the  modern  science  of 
tissues,  or  histology,  and  Virchow  constructed 
his  cellular  pathology  by  applying  it  to  dis- 
eased human  beings.  These  are  the  most 
important  advances  of  theoretical  medicine. 
But  it  was  still  a  long  time  before  the  difficult 
question  of  the  relation  of  these  microscopic 
beings  to  the  cell  was  answered.  Carl  The- 
odor von  Siebold  had  already  maintained  (in 
1845)  that  ^e  real  infusoria  and  the  closely 

128 


tffceas  of  fFmmortaltt^  anfc 

related  rhizopods  were  unicellular  organisms, 
and  had  distinguished  these  protozoa  from  the 
rest  of  the  animals.  At  the  same  time,  Carl 
Naegeli  had  described  the  lowest  algae  as 
"  unicellular  plants."  But  this  important  con- 
ception was  not  generally  admitted  until  some 
time  afterwards,  especially  after  I  brought  all 
the  unicellular  organisms  under  the  head  of 
"protists"  (1872),  and  defined  their  psychic 
functions  as  the  "  cell-soul." 

I  was  led  to  make  a  very  close  study  of 
these  unicellular  protists  and  their  primitive 
cell-soul  through  my  research  on  the  radio- 
laria,  a  very  remarkable  class  of  microscopic 
organisms  that  float  in  the  sea.  I  was  en- 
gaged most  of  my  time  for  more  than  thirty  of 
the  best  years  of  my  life  (1856-87)  in  study- 
ing them  in  every  aspect,  and  if  I  came  even- 
tually to  adopt  a  strictly  Monistic  attitude  on 
all  the  great  questions  of  biology,  I  owe  it  for 
the  most  part  to  my  innumerable  observ- 
ations and  uninterrupted  reflections  on  the 
wonderful  vital  movements  that  are  disclosed 
by  these  smallest  and  frailest,  and  at  the  same 


I2Q 


Xast  TPOiort>s  on  Evolution. 

time    most   beautiful    and   varied,    of   living 
things. 

I  had  undertaken  the  study  of  the  radiolaria 
as  a  kind  of  souvenir  of  my  great  master,  Jo- 
hannes Miiller.  He  had  loved  to  study  these 
animals  (of  which  only  a  few  species  were 
discovered  for  the  first  time  in  the  year  of  my 
birth,  1834)  in  the  last  years  of  his  life,  and 
had  in  1855  set  up  the  special  group  of  the 
rhizopods  (protozoa).  His  last  work,  which 
appeared  shortly  after  his  death  (1858),  and 
contained  a  description  of  50  series  of  radio- 
laria, went  with  me  to  the  Mediterranean  when 
I  made  my  first  long  voyage  in  the  summer 
of  1859.  I  was  so  fortunate  as  to  discover 
about  150  new  species  of  radiolaria  at  Messina, 
and  based  on  these  my  first  monograph  of  this 
very  instructive  class  of  protists  (1862).  I  had 
no  suspicion  at  that  time  that  fifteen  years 
afterwards  the  deep-sea  finds  of  the  famous 
Challenger  expedition  would  bring  to  light  an 
incalculable  wealth  of  these  remarkable  ani- 
mals. In  my  second  monograph  on  them 
(1887),  I  was  able  to  describe  more  than  4,000 

130 


Ufceas  of  Hmmortaiit^  an& 

different  species  of  radiolaria,  and  illustrate 
most  of  them  on  140  plates.  I  have  given  a 
selection  of  the  prettiest  forms  on  ten  plates 
of  my  Art-forms  in  Nature. 

I  have  not  space  here  to  go  into  the  forms 
and  vital  movements  of  the  radiolaria,  of  the 
general  import  of  which  my  friend,  Wilhelm 
Bolsche,  has  given  a  very  attractive  account 
in  his  various  popular  works.  I  must  restrict 
myself  to  pointing  out  the  general  phenom- 
ena that  bear  upon  our  particular  subject,  the 
question  of  the  mind.  The  pretty  flinty 
skeletons  of  the  radiolaria,  which  enclose  and 
protect  the  soft  and  unicellular  body,  are 
remarkable,  not  only  for  their  extraordinary 
gracefulness  and  beauty,  but  also  for  the 
geometrical  regularity  and  relative  constancy 
of  their  forms.  The  4,000  species  of  radio- 
laria are  just  as  constant  as  the  4,000  known 
species  of  ants;  and,  as  the  Darwinian  Jesuit, 
Father  Wasmann,  has  convinced  himself  that 
the  latter  have  all  descended  by  transforma- 
tion from  a  common  stem-form,  I  have  con- 
cluded on  the  same  principles  that  the  4,000 

131 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution* 

species  of  radiolaria  have  developed  from  a 
primitive  form  in  virtue  of  adaptation  and 
heredity.  This  primitive  form,  the  stem- 
radiolarian  (Actissa]  is  a  simple  round  cell, 
the  soft  living  protoplasmic  body  of  which  is 
divided  into  two  different  parts, ,  an  inner 
central  capsule  (in  the  middle  of  which  is  the 
solid  round  nucleus)  and  an  outer  gelatinous 
envelope  (calymma).  From  the  outer  sur- 
face of  the  latter,  hundreds  and  thousands  of 
fine  plasmic  threads  radiate ;  these  are  mobile 
and  sensitive  processes  of  the  living  internal 
substance,  the  plasm  (or  protoplasm.)  These 
delicate  microscopic  threads,  or  pseudopodia, 
are  the  curious  organs  that  effect  the  sensa- 
tions (of  touch),  the  locomotion  (by  pushing^ 
and  the  orderly  construction  of  the  flinty 
house ;  at  the  same  time,  they  maintain  the 
nourishment  of  the  unicellular  body,  by  seiz- 
ing infusoria,  diatoms,  and  other  protists,  and 
drawing  them  within  the  plasmic  body,  where 
they  are  digested  and  assimilated.  The  radio- 
laria generally  reproduce  by  the  formation  of 
spores.  The  nucleus  within  the  protoplasmic 

132 


Hfceas  of  Hmmortaiits  anfc 

globule  divides  into  two  small  nuclei,  each  of 
which  surrounds  itself  with  a  quantity  of 
plasm,  and  forms  a  new  cell. 

What  is  this  plasm  ?  What  is  this  mysterious 
"living  substance'*  that  we  find  everywhere 
as  the  material  foundation  of  the  "  wonders  of 
life?"  Plasm,  or  protoplasm,  is,  as  Huxley 
rightly  said  thirty  years  ago,  "the  physical 
basis  of  organic  life; "  to  speak  more  precisely, 
it  is  a  chemical  compound  of  carbon  that  alone 
accomplishes  the  various  processes  of  life.  In 
its  simplest  form  the  living  cell  is  merely  a  soft 
globule  of  plasm,  containing  a  firmer  nucleus. 
The  inner  nuclear  matter  (called  caryoplasm) 
differs  somewhat  in  chemical  composition  from 
the  outer  cellular  matter  (or  cytoplasm) ;  but 
both  substances  are  composed  of  carbon,  oxy- 
gen, hydrogen,  nitrogen,  and  sulphur;  both 
belong  to  the  remarkable  group  of  the  albu- 
minates,  the  nitrogenous  carbonates  that  are 
distinguished  for  the  extraordinary  size  of  their 
molecules  and  the  unstable  arrangement  of  the 
numerous  atoms  (more  than  a  thousand)  that 

compose  them. 

133 


on  Bx>olution. 

There  are,  however,  still  simpler  organisms 
in  which  the  nucleus  and  the  body  of  the  cell 
have  not  yet  been  differentiated.  These  are 
the  monera,  the  whole  living  body  of  which  is 
merely  a  homogeneous  particle  of  plasm  (the 
chromacea  and  bacteria).  The  well-known 
bacteria  which  now  play  so  important  a  part 
as  the  causes  of  most  dangerous  infectious 
diseases,  and  the  agents  of  putrefaction,  fer- 
mentation, etc.,  show  very  clearly  that  organic 
life  is  only  a  chemical  and  physical  process, 
and  not  the  outcome  of  a  mysterious  "  vital 
force/1 

We  see  this  still  more  clearly  in  our  radio- 
laria,  and  at  the  same  time  they  show  as  un- 
mistakably that  even  psychic  activity  is  such 
a  physico-chemical  process.  All  the  different 
functions  of  their  cell-soul,  the  sense-percep- 
tion of  stimuli,  the  movement  of  their  plasm, 
their  nutrition,  growth,  and  reproduction,  are 
determined  by  the  particular  chemical  com- 
position of  each  of  the  4,000  species;  and  they 
have  all  descended,  in  virtue  of  adaptation  and 

134 


TTbe  Ufceas  of  Ummortalifg  anfc 

heredity,  from  the  common  stem-form  of  the 
naked,  round  parent-radiolarian  (Actissa}. 

We  may  instance,  as  a  peculiarly  interesting 
fact  in  the  psychic  life  of  the  unicellular  radi- 
olaria,  the  extraordinary  power  of  memory  in 
them.  The  relative  constancy  with  which  the 
4,000  species  transmit  the  orderly  and  often 
very  complex  form  of  their  protective  flinty 
structure  from  generation  to  generation  can 
only  be  explained  by  admitting  in  the  builders, 
the  invisible  plasma-molecules  of  the  pseudo- 
podia,  a  fine  "plastic  sense  of  distance,"  and 
a  tenacious  recollection  of  the  architectural 
power  of  their  fathers.  The  fine,  formless 
plasma-threads  are  always  building  afresh  the 
same  delicate  flinty  shells  with  an  artistic 
trellis-work,  and  with  protective  radiating 
needles  and  supports  always  at  the  same  points 
of  their  surface.  The  physiologist,  Ewald 
Hering  (of  Leipsic),  had  spoken  in  1870  of 
memory  as  "a  general  function  of  organized 
matter.  I  myself  had  tried  to  explain  the 
molecular  features  of  heredity  by  the  memory 
of  the  plasma-molecules,  in  my  essay  on  "The 

135 


3Last  TKRorfcs  on  Devolution, 

Perigenesis  of  the  Plastidules"  (1875).  Re- 
cently one  of  the  ablest  of  my  pupils,  Professor 
Richard  Semon  (of  Munich,  1904),  made  a 
profound  study  of  "Mneme  as  the  principle 
of  constancy  in  the  changes  of  organic  phe- 
nomena," and  reduced  the  mechanical  process 
of  reproduction  to  a  purely  physiological  base. 
From  the  cell-soul  and  its  memory  in  the 
radiolaria  and  other  unicellular  protists,  we 
pass  directly  to  the  similar  phenomenon  in  the 
ovum,  the  unicellular  starting-point  of  the  in- 
dividual life  from  which  the  complex  multi- 
cellular  frame  of  all  the  histona,  or  tissue- 
forming  animals  and  plants,  is  developed. 
Even  the  human  organism  is  at  first  a  simple 
nucleated  globule  of  plasm,  about  Tih-  inch  in 
diameter,  barely  visible  to  the  naked  eye  as  a 
tiny  point.  This  stem-cell  (cytula)  is  formed 
at  the  moment  when  the  ovum  is  fertilized,  or 
mingled  with  the  small  male  spermatozoon. 
The  ovum  transmits  to  the  child  by  heredity 
the  personal  traits  of  the  mother,  the  sperm- 
cell  those  of  the  father;  and  this  hereditary 
transmission  extends  to  the  finest  characteris- 

136 


Ube  Ufceas  of  Immortality  anfc 

tics  of  the  soul  as  well  as  of  the  body.  The 
modern  research  as  to  heredity,  which  occu- 
pies so  much  space  now  in  biological  literature, 
but  was  only  started  by  Darwin  in  1859,  is 
directed  immediately  to  the  visible  material 
processes  of  impregnation. 

The  very  interesting  and  important  phenom- 
ena of  impregnation  have  only  been  known 
to  us  in  detail  for  thirty  years.  It  has  been 
shown  conclusively,  after  a  number  of  delicate 
investigations,  that  the  individual  develop- 
ment of  the  embryo  from  the  stem-cell  or  fer- 
tilized ovum  is  controlled  by  the  same  laws  in 
all  cases.  The  stem-cell  divides  and  sub- 
divides rapidly  into  a  number  of  simple  cells. 
From  these  a  few  simple  organs,  the  germinal 
layers,  are  formed  at  first ;  later  on  the  various 
organs,  of  which  there  is  no  trace  in  the  early 
embryo,  are  built  up  out  of  these.  The  bio- 
genetic  law  teaches  us  how,  in  this  develop- 
ment, the  original  features  of  the  ancestral 
history  are  reproduced  or  recapitulated  in  the 
embryonic  processes ;  and  these  facts  in  turn 
can  only  be  explained  by  the  unconscious 

137 


Xast  TKaorfcs  on  Evolution. 

memory  of  the  plasm,  the  "mneme  of  the  liv- 
ing substance "  in  the  germ-cells,  and  especi- 
ally in  their  nuclei. 

One  important  result  of  these  modern  dis- 
coveries was  the  prominence  given  to  the  fact 
that  the  personal  soul  has  a  beginning  of 
existence,  and  that  we  can  determine  the  pre- 
cise moment  in  which  this  takes  place;  it  is 
when  the  parent  cells,  the  ovum  and  sperma- 
tozoon, coalesce.  Hence,  what  we  call  the 
soul  of  man  or  the  animal  has  not  pre-existed, 
but  begins  its  career  at  the  moment  of  impreg- 
nation ;  it  is  bound  up  with  the  chemical  con- 
stitution of  the  plasm,  which  is  the  material 
vehicle  of  heredity  in  the  nucleus  of  the  ma- 
ternal ovum  and  the  paternal  spermatozoon. 
One  cannot  see  how  a  being  that  thus  has  a 
beginning  of  existence  can  afterwards  prove 
to  be  "  immortal." 

Further,  a  candid  examination  of  the  sim- 
ple cell-soul  in  the  unicellular  infusoria,  and 
of  the  dawn  of  the  individual  soul  in  the  uni- 
cellular germ  of  man  and  the  higher  animals, 
proves  at  once  that  psychic  action  does  not 

138 


f  t>eas  of  Immortality  anb 

necessarily  postulate  a  fully  formed  nervous 
system,  as  was  previously  believed.  There 
is  no  such  system  in  many  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals, or  any  of  the  plants,  yet  we  find  psy- 
chic activities,  especially  sensation,  irritabili- 
ty, and  reflex  action  everywhere.  All  living 
plasm  has  a  psychic  life,  and  in  this  sense 
the  psyche  is  a  partial  function  of  organic  life 
generally.  But  the  higher  pyschic  functions, 
particularly  the  phenomena  of  consciousness, 
only  appear  gradually  in  the  higher  animals, 
in  which,  (in  consequence  of  a  division  of 
labor  among  the  organs)  the  nervous  system 
has  assumed  these  functions. 

It  is  particularly  interesting  to  glance  at 
the  central  nervous  system  of  the  vertebrates, 
the  great  stem  of  which  we  regard  ourselves 
as  the  crowning  point.  Here  again  the  ana- 
tomical and  embryological  facts  speak  a 
clear  and  unambiguous  language.  In  all 
vertebrates,  from  the  lowest  fishes  up  to 
man,  the  psychic  organ  makes  its  appearance 
in  the  embryo  in  the  same  form — a  simple 
cylindrical  tube  on  the  dorsal  side  of  the  em- 

139 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution, 

bryonic  body,  in  the  middle  line.  The  anterior 
section  of  this  " medullary  tube"  expands  into 
a  club-shaped  vesicle,  which  is  the  beginning 
of  the  brain ;  the  posterior  and  thinner  section 
becomes  the  spinal  cord.  The  cerebral  vesicle 
divides,  by  transverse  constrictions,  into  three, 
then  four,  and  eventually  five  vesicles.  The 
most  important  of  these  is  the  first,  the 
cerebrum,  the  organ  of  the  highest  psychic 
functions.  The  more  the  intelligence  devel- 
ops in  the  higher  vertebrates,  the  larger, 
more  voluminous,  and  more  specialized  does 
the  cerebrum  become.  In  particular,  the 
grey  mantle  or  cortex  of  the  cerebrum,  its 
most  important  part,  only  attains  in  the 
higher  mammals  the  degree  of  quantitative 
and  qualitative  development  that  qualifies  it 
to  be  the  "  organ  of  mind"  in  the  narrower 
sense.  Through  the  famous  discoveries  of 
Paul  Flechsig  eleven  years  ago  we  were 
enabled  to  distinguish  eight  fields  in  the 
cortex,  four  of  which  serve  as  the  internal 
centres  of  sense-perception,  and  the  four  that 

lie  between  these  are  the  thought  centres  (or 

140 


Ube  flfceas  of  irmmortaltts  an& 

association  centres)  of  the  higher  psychic 
faculties — the  association  of  impressions,  the 
formation  of  ideas  and  concepts,  induction 
and  deduction.  The  real  organ  of  mind,  the 
phronema,  is  not  yet  developed  in  the  lower 
mammals.  It  is  only  gradually  built  up  in 
the  more  advanced,  exactly  in  proportion  as 
their  intelligence  increases.  It  is  only  in  the 
most  intelligent  forms  of  the  placentals,  the 
higher  ungulates  (horse,  elephant),  the  car- 
nivores, (fox,  dog),  and  especially  the  pri- 
mates, that  the  phronema  attains  the  high 
grade  of  development  that  leads  us  from  the 
anthropoid  apes  direct  to  the  savage,  and 
from  him  to  civilized  man. 

We  have  learned  a  good  deal  about  the 
special  significance  of  the  various  parts  of 
the  brain,  as  organs  of  specific  functions,  by 
the  progress  of  the  modern  science  of  experi- 
mental physiology.  Careful  experiments  by 
Goltz,  Munk,  Bernard,  and  many  other  phys- 
iologists, have  shown  that  the  normal  con- 
sciousness, speech,  and  the  internal  sense- 
perceptions,  are  connected  with  definite  areas 

141 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

of  the  cortex,  and  that  these  various  parts  of 
the  soul  are  destroyed  when  the  organic  areas 
connected  with  them  are  injured.  But  in  this 
respect  Nature  has  unconsciously  given  us 
the  most  instructive  experiments.  Diseases 
in  these  various  areas  show  how  their  func- 
tions are  partially  or  totally  extinguished  when 
the  cerebral  cells  that  compose  them  (the  neu- 
rona  or  ganglionic  cells)  are  partially  or  en- 
tirely destroyed.  Here  again  Virchow,  who 
was  the  first  to  make  a  careful  microscopic 
study  of  the  finest  changes  in  the  diseased 
cells,  and  so  explain  the  nature  of  the  disease, 
did  pioneer  work.  I  still  remember  very  well 
a  spectacle  of  this  kind  (in  the  summer  of 
1855,  at  Wiirzburg),  which  made  a  deep  im- 
pression on  me.  Virchow's  sharp  eye  had 
detected  a  small  suspicious  spot  in  the  cere- 
brum of  a  lunatic,  though  there  seemed  to  be 
nothing  remarkable  about  it  on  superficial 
examination.  He  handed  it  to  me  for  micro- 
scopic examination,  and  I  found  that  a  large 
number  of  the  ganglionic  cells  were  affected, 
partly  by  fatty  degeneration  and  partly  by 

142 


TTbe  f  fceas  of  f  mmortaitts  anfc 

calcification.  The  luminous  remarks  that  my 
great  teacher  made  on  these  and  similar  finds 
in  other  cases  of  mental  disorder,  confirmed 
my  conviction  of  the  unity  of  the  human  or- 
ganism and  the  inseparable  connection  of 
mind  and  body,  which  he  himself  at  that  time 
expressly  shared.  When  he  abandoned  this 
Monistic  conception  of  the  psychic  life  for 
Dualism  and  Mysticism  twenty  years  after- 
wards (especially  after  his  Munich  speech  in 
1877),  we  must  attribute  this  partly  to  his 
psychological  metamorphosis,  and  partly  to 
the  political  motives  of  which  I  spoke  in  the 
last  chapter. 

We  find  another  series  of  strong  arguments 
in  favor  of  our  Monistic  psychology  in  the 
individual  development  of  the  soul  in  the  child 
and  the  young  animal.  We  know  that  the 
new-born  child  has  as  yet  no  consciousness, 
no  intelligence,  no  independent  judgment  and 
thought.  We  follow  the  gradual  development 
of  these  higher  faculties  step  by  step  in  the 
first  years  of  life,  in  strict  proportion  to  the 
anatomical  development  of  the  cortex  with 

143 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

which  they  are  bound  up.  The  inquiries  into 
the  child-soul  which  Wilhelm  Preyer  began  in 
Jena  twenty-five  years  ago,  his  careful  "  ob- 
servations of  the  mental  development  of  man 
in  his  early  years/'  and  the  supplementary 
research  of  several  more  recent  physiologists, 
have  shown,  from  the  ontogenetic  side,  that 
the  soul  is  not  a  special  immaterial  entity,  but 
the  sum-total  of  a  number  of  connected  func- 
tions of  the  brain.  When  the  brain  dies,  the 
soul  comes  to  an  end. 

We  have  further  proof  in  the  stem-history 
of  the  soul,  which  we  gather  from  the  com- 
parative psychology  of  the  lower  and  higher 
mammals,  and  of  savage  and  civilized  races. 
Modern  ethnography  shows  us  in  actual  ex- 
istence the  various  stages  through  which  the 
mind  rose  to  its  present  height.  The  most 
primitive  races,  such  as  the  Veddahs  of  Cey- 
lon, or  the  Australian  natives,  are  very  little 
above  the  mental  life  of  the  anthropoid  apes. 
From  the  higher  savages  we  pass  by  a  com- 
plete gradation  of  stages  to  the  most  civilized 

races.     But  what  a  gulf  there  is,  even  here, 

144 


Ube  f  Seas  of  f  mmortaiits  ant> 

between  the  genius  of  a  Goethe,  a  Darwin,  or 
a  Lamarck,  and  an  ordinary  philistine  or 
third-rate  official.  All  these  facts  point  to  one 
conclusion:  the  human  soul  has  only  reached 
its  present  height  by  a  long  period  of  gradual 
evolution;  it  differs  in  degree,  not  in  kind, 
from  the  soul  of  the  higher  mammals ;  and 
thus  it  cannot  in  any  case  be  immortal. 

That  a  large  number  of  educated  people 
still  cling  to  the  dogma  of  personal  immortality 
in  spite  of  these  luminous  proofs,  is  owing  to 
the  great  power  of  conservative  tradition  and 
the  evil  methods  of  instruction  that  stamp 
these  untenable  dogmas  deep  on  the  growing 
mind  in  early  years.  It  is  for  that  very  rea- 
son that  the  Churches  strive  to  keep  the 
schools  under  their  power  at  any  cost ;  they 
can  control  and  exploit  the  adults  at  will,  if 
independent  thought  and  judgment  have  been 
stifled  in  the  earlier  years. 

This  brings  us  to  the  interesting  question: 
What  is  the  position  of  the  "  ecclesiastical 
evolution"  of  the  Jesuits  (the  " latest  course 
of  Darwinism,")  as  regards  this  great  ques- 
ts 


Zast  TKaorfcs  on  Evolution. 

tion  of  the  soul  ?  Man  is,  according  to  Was- 
mann,  the  image  of  God  and  a  unique, 
immaterial  being,  differing  from  all  other  ani- 
mals in  the  possession  of  an  immortal  soul, 
and  therefore  having  a  totally  different  origin 
from  them.  Man's  immortal  soul  is,  accord- 
ing to  this  Jesuit  sophistry,  "  spiritual  and 
sensitive,"  while  the  animal  soul  is  sensitive 
only.  God  has  implanted  his  own  spirit  in 
man,  and  associated  it  with  an  animal  soul  for 
the  period  of  life.  It  is  true  that  Wasmann 
believes  even  man's  body  to  have  been  created 
directly  by  God ;  but,  in  view  of  the  over- 
whelming proofs  of  our  animal  descent,  he 
leaves  open  the  possibility  of  a  development 
from  a  series  of  other  animals,  in  which  case 
the  Divine  spirit  would  be  breathed  into  him 
in  the  end.  The  Christian  Fathers,  who  were 
much  occupied  with  the  introduction  of  the 
soul  into  the  human  embryo,  tell  us  that  the 
immortal  soul  enters  the  soulless  embryo  on 
the  fortieth  day  after  conception  in  the  case  of 
the  boy,  and  on  the  eightieth  day  in  the  case 
of  the  girl.  If  Wasmann  supposes  that  there 

146 


Ube  flfceas  of  flmmortalitp  an& 

was  a  similar  introduction  of  the  soul  in  the 
development  of  the  race,  he  must  postulate 
a  moment  in  the  history  of  the  anthropoid 
apes  when  God  sent  his  spirit  into  the  hitherto 
unspiritual  soul  of  the  ape. 

When  we  look  at  the  matter  impartially  in 
the  light  of  pure  reason,  the  belief  in  immor- 
tality is  wholly  inconsistent  with  the  facts  of 
evolution  and  of  physiology.  The  ontogenetic 
dogma  of  the  older  Church,  that  the  soul  is 
introduced  into  the  soulless  body  at  a  par- 
ticular moment  of  its  embryonic  development, 
is  just  as  absurd  as  the  phylogenetic  dogma 
of  the  most  modern  Jesuits,  that  the  Divine 
spirit  was  breathed  into  the  frame  of  an  an- 
thropoid ape  at  a  certain  period  (in  the  Terti- 
ary period),  and  so  converted  it  into  an  im- 
mortal soul.  We  may  examine  and  test  this 
belief  as  we  will,  we  can  find  in  it  nothing  but 
a  piece  of  mystic  superstition.  It  is  main- 
tained solely  by  the  great  power  of  tradition 
and  the  support  of  Conservative  governments, 
the  leaders  of  which  have  no  personal  belief 
in  these  "  revelations,"  but  cling  to  the  prac- 

147 


Xast  Worfcs  on  Evolution. 

tical  conviction  that  throne  and  altar  must 
support  each  other.  They  unfortunately  over- 
look the  circumstance  that  the  throne  is  apt  to 
become  merely  the  footstool  to  the  altar,  and 
that  the  Church  exploits  the  State  for  its  own, 
not  the  State's,  good. 

We  learn  further,  from  the  history  of  this 
dogma,  that  the  belief  in  immortality  did  not 
find  its  way  into  science  until  a  comparatively 
late  date.  It  is  not  found  in  the  great  Mo- 
nistic natural  philosophers'  who,  six  centuries 
before  the  time  of  Christ,  evinced  a  profound 
insight  into  the  real  nature  of  the  world.  It 
is  not  found  in  Democritus  and  Empedocles, 
in  Seneca  and  Lucretius  Carus.  It  is  not 
found  in  the  older  Oriental  religions,  Budd- 
hism, the  ancient  religion  of  the  Chinese,  or 
Confucianism;  in  fact,  there  is  no  question 
of  individual  persistence  after  death  in  the 
Pentateuch  or  the  earlier  books  of  the  Old 
Testament  (which  were  written  before  the 
Babylonian  Exile).  It  was  Plato  and  his 
pupil,  Aristotle,  that  found  a  place  for  it  in 
their  dualistic  metaphysics;  and  its  agree- 

148 


Ube  Ufceas  of  flmmortalits  an£> 

ment  with  the  Christian  and  Mohammedan 
teaching  secured  for  it  a  very  widespread  ac- 
ceptance. 

Another  psychological  dogma,  the  belief  in 
man's  free-will,  is  equally  inconsistent  with 
the  truth  of  evolution.  Modern  physiology 
shows  clearly  that  the  will  is  never  really  free 
in  man  or  in  the  animal,  but  determined  by 
the  organization  of  the  brain ;  this  in  turn  is 
its  individual  character  by  the  laws  of  heredity 
and  the  influence  of  the  environment.  It  is 
only  because  the  apparent  freedom  of  the  will 
has  such  a  great  practical  significance  in  the 
province  of  religion,  morality,  sociology,  and 
law,  that  it  still  forms  the  subject  of  the  most 
contradictory  claims.  Theoretically,  deter- 
minism, or  the  doctrine  of  the  necessary 
character  of  our  volitions,  was  established  long 
ago. 

With  the  belief  in  the  absolute  freedom  of 
the  will  and  the  personal  immortality  of  the 
soul  is  associated,  in  the  minds  of  many  highly 
educated  people,  a  third  article  of  faith,  the 
belief  in  a  personal  God.  It  is  well  known 

149 


Xast  TKftorfcs  on  Bx>olution. 

that  this  belief,  often  wrongly  represented  as 
an  indispensable  foundation  of  religion,  as- 
sumes the  most  widely  varied  shapes.  As  a 
rule,  however,  it  is  an  open  or  covert  anthro- 
pomorphism. God  is  conceived  as  the  "Su- 
preme Being,'*  but  turns  out,  on  closer  ex- 
amination, to  be  an  idealized  man.  According 
to  the  Mosaic  narrative,  "God  made  man  to 
his  own  image  and  likeness,"  but  it  is  usually 
the  reverse:  "Man  made  God  according  to 
his  own  image  and  likeness/'  This  idealized 
man  becomes  creator  and  architect  and  pro- 
duces the  world,  forming  the  various  species 
of  plants  and  animals  like  a  modeler,  govern- 
ing the  world  like  a  wise  and  all-powerful 
monarch,  and,  at  the  "Last  Judgment,"  re- 
warding the  good  and  punishing  the  wicked 
like  a  rigorous  judge.  The  childish  concep- 
tions of  this  extramundane  God,  who  is  set 
over  against  the  world  as  an  independent  be- 
ing, the  personal  creator,  maintainer,  and  ruler 
of  all  things,  are  quite  incompatible  with  the 
advanced  science  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
especially  with  its  two  greatest  triumphs,  the 

150 


Ube  ITfceas  of  flmmortalif£  anfc 

law  of  substance  and  the  law  of  Monistic  evo- 
lution. 

Critical  philosophy,  moreover,  long  ago 
pronounced  its  doom.  In  the  first  place,  the 
most  famous  critical  thinker,  Immanuel  Kant, 
proved  in  his  Critique  of  P^lre  Reason  that  ab- 
solute science  affords  no  support  to  the  three 
central  dogmas  of  metaphysics,  the  personal 
God,  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  the  free- 
dom of  the  will.  It  is  true  that  he  afterwards 
(in  the  course  of  his  dualistic  and  dogmatic 
metamorphosis)  taught  that  we  must  believe 
these  three  great  mystic  forces,  and  that  they 
are  indispensable  postulates  of  practical  rea- 
son ;  and  that  the  latter  must  take  precedence 
over  pure  reason.  Modern  German  philos- 
ophy, which  clamors  for  a  "return  to  Kant," 
sees  his  chief  distinction  in  this  impossible 
reconciliation  of  polar  contradictions.  The 
Churches,  and  the  ruling  powers  in  alliance 
with  them,  accord  a  welcome  to  this  diamet- 
rical contradiction,  recognized  by  all  candid 
readers  of  the  Konigsberg  philosopher,  be- 
tween the  two  reasons.  They  use  the  confusion 


SLast  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution. 

that  results  for  the  purpose  of  putting  the  light 
of  the  creeds  in  the  darkness  of  doubting 
reason,  and  imagine  that  they  save  religion  in 
this  way. 

Whilst  we  are  engaged  with  the  important 
subject  of  religion,  we  must  refute  the  charge, 
often  made,  and  renewed  of  recent  years,  that 
our  Monistic  philosophy  and  the  theory  of 
evolution  that  forms  its  chief  foundation  de- 
stroy religion.  It  is  only  opposed  to  those 
lower  forms  of  religion  that  are  based  on 
superstition  and  ignorance,  and  would  hold 
man's  reason  in  bondage  by  empty  formalism 
and  belief  in  the  miraculous,  in  order  to  control 
it  for  political  purposes.  This  is  chiefly  the 
case  with  Romanism  or  Ultramontanism,  that 
pitiful  caricature  of  pure  Christianity  that  still 
plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  world.  Luther 
would  turn  in  his  grave  if  he  would  see  the 
predominance  of  the  Roman  Centre  party  in 
the  German  Empire  to-day.  We  find  the 
papacy,  the  deadly  enemy  of  Protestant  Ger- 
many, controlling  its  destiny,  and  the  Reichs- 
tag submitting  willingly  to  be  led  by  the  Jes- 

152 


Hfceas  of  ITmmortalits  ant) 

uits.  Not  a  voice  do  we  hear  raised  in  it 
against  the  three  most  dangerous  and  mis- 
chievous institutions  of  Romanism — the  obli- 
gatory celibacy  of  the  clergy,  the  confessional, 
and  indulgences.  Though  these  later  institu- 
tions of  the  Roman  Church  have  nothing  to 
do  with  the  original  teaching  of  the  Church 
and  pure  Christianity;  though  their  immoral 
consequences,  so  prejudicial  to  the  life  of  the 
family  and  the  State,  are  known  to  all,  they 
exist  just  as  they  did  before  the  Reformation. 
Unfortunately,  many  German  princes  foster 
the  ambition  of  the  Roman  clergy,  making 
their  "Canossa-journey"  to  Rome,  and  bend- 
ing the  knee  to  the  great  charlatan  at  the 
Vatican. 

It  is  also  very  regrettable  that  the  increas- 
ing tendency  to  external  show  and  festive 
parade  at  what  is  called  "the  new  court"  does 
grave  injury  to  real  and  inner  religion.  We 
have  a  striking  instance  of  this  external  re- 
ligion in  the  new  cathedral  at  Berlin,  which 
many  would  have  us  regard  as  "Catholic," 
not  Protestant  and  Evangelical.  I  often  met 

153 


3Last  TKHorfcs  on  Evolution, 

in  India  priests  and  pilgrims  who  believed 
they  were  pleasing  their  God  by  turning 
prayer-wheels,  or  setting  up  prayer-mills  that 
were  set  in  motion  by  the  wind.  One  might 
utilize  the  modern  invention  of  automatic 
machines  for  the  same  purposes,  and  set  up 
praying  automata  in  the  new  cathedral,  or  in- 
dulgence-machines that  would  give  relief  from 
lighter  sins  for  one  mark  [shilling],  and  from 
graver  sins  for  twenty  marks.  It  would  prove 
a  great  source  of  revenue  to  the  Church, 
especially  if  similar  machines  were  set  up  in 
the  other  churches  that  have  lately  been 
erected  in  Berlin  at  a  cost  of  millions  of  marks. 
It  would  have  been  better  to  have  spent  the 
money  on  schools. 

These  observations  on  the  more  repellent 
characters  of  modern  orthodoxy  and  piety  may 
be  taken  as  some  reply  to  the  sharp  attacks  to 
which  I  have  been  exposed  for  forty  years,  and 
which  have  lately  been  renewed  with  great 
violence  The  spokesmen  of  Catholic  and 
Evangelical  beliefs,  especially  the  Romanist 
Germania  and  the  Lutheran  Reichsbote,  have 

154 


Ube  ITOeas  or  irmmottaitt^  ant) 

vied  with  each  other  in  deploring  my  lectures 
as  "a  desecration  of  this  venerable  hall,"  and 
in  damning  my  theory  of  evolution — without, 
of  course,  making  any  attempt  to  repute  its 
scientific  truth.  They  have,  in  their  Christian 
charity,  thought  fit  to  put  sandwich-men  at 
the  doors  of  this  room,  to  distribute  scurrilous 
attacks  on  my  person  and  my  teaching  to  those 
who  enter.  They  have  made  a  generous  use 
of  the  fanatical  calumnies  that  the  court  chap- 
lain, Stocker,  the  theologian,  Loofs,  the  phi- 
lologist, Dennert,  and  other  opponents  of  my 
Riddle  of  the  Universe,  have  disseminated,  and 
to  which  I  make  a  brief  reply  at  the  end  of  that 
work.  I  pass  by  the  many  untruths  of  these 
zealous  protagonists  of  theology.  We  men  of 
science  have  a  different  conception  of  truth 
from  that  which  prevails  in  ecclesiastical  cir- 
cles. * 

1  I  may  remind  those  who  think  that  the  hall  of  the  Mu- 
sical Academy  is  "  desecrated  "  by  my  lectures,  that  it  was 
in  the  very  same  place  that  Alexander  von  Humboldt  de- 
livered, seventy-seven  years  ago  (1828),  the  remarkable 
lectures  that  afterwards  made  up  his  Cosmos.  The  great 
traveler,  whose  clear  mind  had  recognized  the  unity  of  Na- 
ture, and  had,  with  Goethe,  discovered  therein  the  real 

155 


Xast  Mor&s  on  Evolution, 

As  regards  the  relation  of  science  to 
Christianity,  I  will  only  point  out  that  it  is 
quite  irreconcilable  with  the  mystic  and 
supernatural  Christian  beliefs,  but  that  it 
fully  recognizes  the  high  ethical  value  of 
Christian  morality.  It  is  true  that  the 
highest  commands  of  the  Christian  religion, 
especially  those  of  sympathy  and  brotherly 
love,  are  not  discoveries  of  its  own ;  the 
golden  rule  was  taught  and  practised  centu- 
ries before  the  time  of  Christ.  However, 
Christianity  has  the  distinction  of  preaching 
and  developing  it  with  a  fresh  force.  In  its 
time  it  has  had  a  beneficial  influence  on  the 
development  of  civilization,  though  in  the 
Middle  Ages  the  Roman  Church  became, 

knowledge  of  God,  endeavored  to  convey  his  thoughts  in 
popular  form  to  the  educated  Berlin  public,  and  to  establish 
the  university  of  natural  law.  It  was  my  aim  to  establish, 
as  regards  the  organic  world,  precisely  what  Humboldt  had 
proved  to  exist  in  inorganic  nature.  I  wanted  to  show  how 
the  great  advance  of  modern  biology  (since  Darwin's  time) 
enables  us  to  solve  the  most  difficult  of  all  problems,  the 
historical  development  of  plants  and  animals  in  humanity. 
Humboldt  in  his  day  earned  the  most  lively  approval  and 
gratitude  of  all  free-thinking  and  truth-seeking  men,  and 
the  displeasure  and  suspicion  of  the  orthodox  and  conserva- 
tive courtiers  at  Berlin. 

1.56 


Ufceas  of  flmmortalits  anfc 

with  its  Inquisition,  its  witch-drowning,  its 
burning  of  heretics,  and  its  religious  wars, 
the  bloodiest  caricature  of  the  gentle  religion 
of  love.  Orthodox  historical  Christianity  is 
not  directly  destroyed  by  modern  science, 
but  by  its  own  learned  and  zealous  theologi- 
ans. The  enlightened  Protestantism  that 
was  so  effectively  advocated  by  Schleier- 
macher  in  Berlin  eighty  years  ago,  the  later 
works  of  Feuerbach,  the  inquiries  into  the  life 
of  Jesus  of  David  Strauss  and  Ernest  Renan, 
the  lectures  recently  delivered  here  by 
Delitzsch  and  Harnack,  have  left  very  little 
of  what  strict  orthodoxy  regards  as  the  indis- 
pensable foundations  of  historical  Christi- 
anity. Kalthoff,  of  Bremen,  goes  so  far  as 
to  declare  that  all  Christian  traditions  are 
myths,  and  that  the  development  of  Christi- 
anity is  a  necessary  outcome  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  the  time. 

In  view  of  this  broadening  tendency  in 
theology  and  philosophy  at  the  beginning  of 
the  twentieth  century,  it  is  an  unfortunate 
anachronism  that  the  Ministers  of  Public  In- 

157 


Xast  TKHor&s  on  Evolution. 

struction  of  Prussia  and  Bavaria  sail  in  the 
wake  of  the  Catholic  Church,  and  seek  to 
instil  the  spirit  of  the  Jesuits  in  both  lower 
and  higher  education.  It  is  only  a  few 
weeks  since  the  Prussian  Minister  of  Wor- 
ship made  a  dangerous  attempt  to  suppress 
academic  freedom,  the  palladium  of  mental 
life  in  Germany.  This  increasing  reaction 
recalls  the  sad  days  of  the  eighteenth  and 
nineteenth  centuries,  when  thousands  of  the 
finest  citizens  of  Germany  migrated  to  North 
America,  in  order  to  develop  their  mental 
powers  in  a  free  atmosphere.  This  selective 
process  formed  a  blessing  to  the  United 
States,  but  it  was  certainly  very  injurious  to 
Germany.  Large  numbers  of  weak  and  ser- 
vile characters  and  sycophants  were  thus 
favored.  The  fossilized  ideas  of  many  of 
our  leading  jurists  seems  to  take  us  back 
sometimes  to  the  Cretaceous  and  Jurassic 
periods,  while  the  palaeozoic  rhetoric  of  our 
theologians  and  synods  even  goes  back  to 
the  Permian  and  Carboniferous  periods. 
However,  we  must  not  take  too  seriously 

158 


TTbe  f  Seas  of  f  mmortalit£  and 

the  anxiety  that  this  increasing  political  and 
clerical  reaction  causes  us.  We  must  re- 
member the  vast  resources  of  civilization  that 
are  seen  to-day  in  our  enormous  interna- 
tional intercourse,  and  must  have  confidence 
in  the  helpful  exchange  of  ideas  between  east 
and  west  that  is  being  effected  daily  by  our 
means  of  transit.  Even  in  Germany  the 
darkness  that  now  prevails  will  at  length 
give  place  to  the  dazzling  light  of  the  sun. 
Nothing,  in  my  opinion,  will  contribute  more 
to  that  end  than  the  unconditional  victory  of 
the  idea  of  evolution. 

Beside  the  law  of  evolution,  and  closely 
connected  with  it,  we  have  that  great  triumph 
of  modern  science,  the  law  of  substance — the 
law  of  the  conservation  of  matter  (Lavoisier, 
1789),  and  of  the  conservation  of  energy 
(Rober  Mayer,  1842).  These  two  laws  are 
irreconcilable  with  the  three  central  dogmas 
of  metaphysics,  which  so  many  educated 
people  still  regard  as  the  most  precious 
treasures  of  their  spiritual  life — the  belief  in  a 

personal  God,  the  personal  immortality  of  the 

159 


Worfcs  on  Evolution* 

soul,  and  the  liberty  of  the  human  will.  But 
these  great  objects  of  belief,  so  intimately 
bound  up  with  numbers  of  our  treasured 
achievements  and  institutions,  are  not  on 
that  account  driven  out  of  the  world.  They 
merely  cease  to  pose  as  truths  in  the  realm 
of  pure  science.  As  imaginative  creations, 
they  retain  a  certain  value  in  the  world  of 
poetry.  Here  they  will  not  only,  as  they 
have  done  hitherto,  furnish  thousands  of  the 
finest  and  most  lofty  motives  for  every 
branch  of  art — sculpture,  painting,  or  music 
— but  they  will  still  have  a  high  ethical  and 
social  value  in  the  education  of  the  young 
and  in  the  organization  of  society.  Just  as 
we  derive  artistic  and  ethical  inspiration  from 
the  legends  of  classical  antiquity  (such  as  the 
Hercules  myth,  the  Odyssey  and  the  Iliad] 
and  the  story  of  William  Tell,  so  we  will 
continue  to  do  in  regard  to  the  stories  of  the 
Christian  mythology.  But  we  must  do  the 
same  with  the  poetical  conceptions  of  other 
religions,  which  have  given  the  most  varied 

1 60 


Hfceas  of  flmmortalttg  an& 

forms  to  the   transcendental   ideas   of  God, 
freedom,  and  immortality. 

Thus  the  noble  warmth  of  art  will  remain, 
together  with — not  in  opposition  to,  but  in 
harmony  with — the  splendid  light  of  science, 
one  of  the  most  precious  possessions  of  the 
human  mind.  As  Goethe  said:  "  He  who  has 
science  and  art  has  religion ;  he  who  has  not 
these  two  had  better  have  religion."  Our 
Monistic  system,  the  "connecting  link  be- 
tween religion  and  science,"  brings  God  and 
the  world  into  the  unity  in  the  sense  that 
Goethe  willed,  the  sense  that  Spinoza  clearly 
expressed  long  ago  and  Giordano  Bruno  had 
sealed  with  his  martyrdom.  It  has  been  said 
repeatedly  of  late  that  Goethe  was  an  orthodox 
Christian.  A  few  years  ago  a  young  orator 
quoted  him  in  support  of  the  wonderful  dog- 
mas of  the  Christian  religion.  We  may  point 
out  that  Goethe  himself  expressly  said  he 
was  "a  decided  non-Christian."  The  "great 
heathen  of  Weimar"  has  given  the  clearest 
expression  to  his  Pantheistic  views  in  his  no- 
blest poems,  Faust,  Prometheus,  and  God  and 

161 


Xast  TKHorbs  on  Evolution. 

the  World.  How  could  so  vigorous  a  thinker, 
in  whose  mind  the  evolution  of  organic  life 
ran  through  millions  of  years,  have  shared 
the  narrow  belief  of  a  Jewish  prophet  and  en- 
thusiast who  sought  to  give  up  his  life  for 
humanity  1,900  years  ago? 

Our  Monistic  God,  the  all-embracing  es- 
sence of  the  world,  the  Nature-god  of  Spinoza 
and  Goethe,  is  identical  with  the  eternal,  all- 
inspiring  energy,  and  is  one,  in  eternal  and 
infinite  substance,  with  space-filling  matter. 
It  "lives  and  moves  in  all  things,"  as  the 
Gospel  says.  And  as  we  see  that  the  law  of 
substance  is  universal,  that  the  conservation 
of  matter  and  of  energy  is  inseparably  con- 
nected, and  that  the  ceaseless  development 
of  this  substance  follows  the  same  "eternal 
iron  laws,"  we  find  God  in  natural  law  itself. 
The  will  of  God  is  at  work  in  every  falling 
drop  of  rain  and  every  growing  crystal,  in  the 
scent  of  the  rose  and  the  spirit  of  man. 


162 


APPENDIX. 
EVOLUTIONARY   TABLES. 


163 


I.— GEOLOGICAL  AGES  AND  PERIODS 


Ages  in  the 
Organic  History 
of  the  Earth. 

Periods  of  Geology. 

Vertebrate  Fossils. 

Approximate  length 
of  Paleontological 
Periods. 

I.  Archeozoic  age 
(primordial) 

Age  of  invertebrates 

!I.  Laurentian 
2.  Huronian 
3.  Cambrian 

No  fossil  remains 
of  vertebrates 

52  million  years 
Sedimentary  strata 
63,000  ft.  thick 

JI.  Paleozoic  age 
(primary) 
Age  of  fishes 

4.  Silurian 
5.  Devonian 
6.  Carboniferous 
7.  Permian 

Fishes  • 

Dipneusts 
Amphibia 
Reptiles 

34  million  years 
Sedimentary  strata 
41,200  ft.  thick 

III.  Mesozoic  age 
(secondary) 
Age  of  reptiles 

8.  Triassic 
5.  Jurassic 

10.  Cretaceous 

Monotremes 
Marsupials 

(Mallotkcria 
\  Pro-placentals 

1  1  million  years 
Sedimentary  strata 
I2,200,ft.  thick 

IV.  Cenozoicage 
(tertiary) 
Age  of  mammals 

n.  Eocene 
12.  Oligocene 
13.  Miocene 
14.  Pliocene 

|  Prosimia 
\    Lemurs 

(  Cynopitheca 
\     Baboons 

tAnthropoides 
\    Man-like  apes 

(  Pithecanthropi 
|      Ape-men 

3  million  years 
3,600  ft.  thick 

V.  Anthropozoic  age 
(quaternary) 
Age  of  man 

15.  Glacial 
1  6.  Post-glacial 

Pre-historic  man 

Savage  and  civilised 
man 

300,000  years 
Sedimentary  strata 
little  thickness 

165 


2A.— MAN'S  GENEALOGICAL  TREE— First  Half 

EARLIER  ANCESTRAL  SERIES,   WITHOUT   FOSSIL  REMAINS, 
BEFORE  THE  SILURIAN   PERIOD 


Chief  Stages. 

Ancestral 
•Stem-Groups. 

.  Living  Relatives  of 
our  Ancestors. 

Pale- 
ontol- 
ogy- 

Onto- 
geny. 

Mor- 
phol- 
ogy- 

Stages  i—  $  : 
PROTIST- 
ANCESTORS 
Unicellular 
organisms 

fl.  MONERA 
(Plasmodoma) 
without  nuclei 
2.  ALGARIA 

Unicellular  algae 
with  nuclei 

I.   CH  ROM  ACE  A 

(Ckrdococcus) 
Phycochromacea 
2.  PAULOTOMBA 
Palniellacea 
Eremosfhaera 

0 

o 

!? 

!? 

I 
I 

(  3.   LOBOSA 

3.  AMCEBINA 

0 

!! 

11 

Unicellular 

Amoeba 

1  2  : 

(Amoeboid) 

Lecocyta 

Plasmodomous 
Protophyta 

Rhizopods 
4.  INFUSORIA 
<       (Unicellular) 

4.  FLAGELLATA 

Eufiagellata 
Zoomonades 

o 

t 

U 

Plasmophagous 
Protozoa 

1   5.  BLAST^ADES 
Multicellular 

5.  CATALLACTA 
Magosphaera 

0 

»!! 

ni 

cell-colonies 

Volvotina 

V 

Blastula  ? 

Stages  6—  II  : 
INVERTEBRATE 
METAZOA- 
ANCESTORS 
6-8: 
Ccelenteria, 
without  .anus  or 
body-cavity 

6.  GASTR.*AI>ES 
with  two  ger- 
minal layers 
7.  PLAT-ODES  I. 
Platodaria 
(without  nephridia) 
8.  PLATODES  II. 
Platodinia 
V    (with  nephridia) 

6.  GASTRULA 
ffydrat  Olynthus, 
Orthonectidct 
.  7.  CRYPTOCCELA 
(Convoluta) 
(Proporus) 
8.  RHABDOCCELA 
(Vortex) 
(Monotus) 

0 

o 
o 

!!! 

t 
t 

III 

£ 
I 

'  9.  PROVERMALIA 

9.  GASTROTRICHA 

0 

? 

I 

Rotatoria 

Trochozoa 

Primitive  worms 

Trochophora 

9—  II: 

Vermalia, 

10.  FRONTONIA 
(Rhynchelmintkes) 

.10.  ENTEROPNEUSTA 
Balanoglossus 

6 

? 

I 

with  anus  and 

Snouted  worms 

Cephalodisctis 

body-cavity 

ii.  PROCHOR- 

II.  COPELATA 

o 

!! 

II 

DONIA 

Appendicaria 

Worms  with 

chorda 

12.  ACRANlAl. 

12.  LARV^:  OF 

o 

!!! 

II 

(Prospondylia) 

AMPHIOXUS 

Stages  12—15  : 

MONORRHINA- 

13.  ACRANIA  II. 

Later  skull-less 

13.  LEPTOCARDIA 
Amphioxus 

o 

! 

III 

ANCESTORS 

animals 

(Lancelet) 

Earliest  vertebrates, 
without  jaws  or 
pairs  of  limbs, 

•   I4.CYCLOSTOMAI. 

(Archicrania) 
15.  CYCLOSTOMA 

14.  LARV^:  OF 
PETROMYZON 
15.  MARSIPOBRAN- 

o 
o 

!!! 

II 

ni 

with  single  nostril 

II. 
Later  round- 

CHIA 

Myxinoides 

.  mouthed  animals 

Petromyzontes 

1 66 


2B.— MAN'S  GENEALOGICAL  TREE— Second  Half 

LATER  ANCESTRAL  SERIES,  WITH   FOSSIL  REMAINS, 
BEGINNING  IN  THE  SILURIAN 


Geological  Periods. 

Stem-Groups  of 
Ancestors. 

Living  Relatives  of 
our  Ancestors. 

Pale- 
ontol- 
ogy. 

Onto- 
geny. 

MOT- 
phot. 
ogy. 

(16.  SBLACHII 

l6.  NOTIDANIDES 

M 

!! 

in 

Silurian 

Primitive  fishes 

Chlamydoselachus 

ProselachU 

Heptanchus 

(17.  GANOIDES 

17.   ACCIPENSSRIDBS 

a 

J 

II 

Silurian 

Plated  fishes 

Sturgeon,  Polypterus 

Proganoides 

Devonian    • 

(1  8.   DlPNEUSTA 
Paladipncusta, 

18.  NBODIPNEUSTA 

Ceratodos, 
Protopterus 

M 

11 

u 

Carboniferous      , 
Permian       -        - 

{19.  AMPHIBIA 
Skffxtfhala 

(20.  REPTILIA 
ProreptiKa 

19.  PHANEROBRAN- 

CHIA 

and  Salamandrina 
(Proteus,  Triton) 

aQ.RHYNCOCEPHALIA 

Trimitive  lizards 

3 
S 

IJ4 

11 

"TU 

a 

Hatteria 

{21.    MONOTREMA 

2I.ORNITHODELPHIA 

M 

tit 

m 

Triassic       •        - 

Promammalia 

Echnida 

Ornithorhyncus 

{22.  MARSUPIALIA 

22.  DlDELPHIA 

M 

II 

u 

Jurassic       *       • 

Prodidelphia 

Didelphys, 

Perameles 

Cretaceoos  • 

{23.  MALLOTHERIA 
Prochoriata 

23.  INSBCTIVORA 

Erinaceida 

S 

t 

i 

(Ictopsida-f) 

{24.  LEMUR  AVIDA 

24.  PACHYLBMURBS 

a 

I? 

ii 

Older  Eocene      • 

Earlier  lemurs 

(Pypop3od*s+\ 

>-« 

Dent  3,  t,  4,  3 

(Adapis+) 

1  25.  LEMUROGONA 

25.  AUTOLEMURES 

S 

I? 

n 

Later  Eocene      t 

•j        Later  lemurs 

(Eulemur) 

V      Dent.  2,  1,  4,  3 

(Stenops) 

{26.  DYSMOPI- 

26.  PLATYRRHIIME 

M 

! 

n 

Oligoceoe    -       . 

THECA 

Western  apes 

(Anthropops+) 
(ffomunculus+) 

Dent  2,  1,3,3 

Older  Miocene    . 

(27.  CYNOPITHECA 
Baboons 
(tailed) 

27.-  PAPIOMORPHA 
(Cynocepkalus) 

M 

! 

in 

(28.  ANTHRO- 

28.  HYIOBATIDA 

M 

11 

ni 

Later  Miocene     . 

POIDES 

\    Anthropoid  apes 

Hylobates 
Satyrus 

I          (tailless) 

{29.  PITHECAN- 

29. ANTHROPITHBCA 

3 

til 

ra 

Pliocene      •       - 

THROPI 
Ape-like  men 
(alaH=speechless) 

Chimpanzee 
Gorilla 

(30.  HOMINES 

30.  WKDDAHS 

M 

IS! 

m 

Pleistocene  .       - 

(loquaces=with 

Australian  natives 

speech) 

167 


3.— CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  PRIMATES. 


N.B. — *  indicates  extinct  forms,  t  living  groups,  %  the  hypothetical  stem-form. 
Cf.  History  of  Creation,  chap,  xxvii. ;  Evolution  of  Man,  chap,  xxiii. 


Orders. 

Sub-Orders. 

Families. 

Genera. 

/  i.  PACHYLEMURES* 

Archiprimas^. 
Letnuraims  * 

f  i.  LEMURAVIDA 

(Hypopsodina) 

Early  Eocene 

(Palalemures) 

r»                3  *  4  3 

-  Pelycodus* 

_ 

Early  lemurs 

uent.  44—  .-.j.-.- 

Early  Eocene 

PROSIMIAE 

Lemurs 
(Hemipitheci) 
The    orbits    im- 
perfectly   separated 
from   the  temporal 

(generalists) 
Originally  with 
claws    on   all   or 
most  fingers  :  later 
transition  to  nails. 
Tarsus  primitive. 

Primitive  dentition 

2.  NECROLEMURES 
(Anaptomorpka) 

Dent.40=|.i.|.| 

Hypopsodus  * 
(.    Late  Eocene 

\Adapis* 
\Plesiadapis* 
jNecrolemur* 

depression  by  a  bony 

.    Reduced  dentition 

I 

arch.  Womb  double 
or  two-homed.  Pla- 
centa diffuse,  inde- 
ciduate  (as  a  rule). 
Cerebrum  relatively 
small,    smooth,    or 
little  furrowed. 

2.  LEMUROGONA 
(Neoleniures} 
Modern  lemures 
(specialists) 
All  fingers  usually 
have  nails  (except 
the  second  toe). 
.   Tarsus  modified 

3.-  AUTOLEMURESf 

(Lemurida) 
Dent.  36=|-I.|.| 

rEulemttr 
j  Hapalemur 
\  Lepilemur 
1  Nycticebus 
\  Stenops 
^Galago 

\  Chiromys 
\      (Claws  off  att 
\  fingers  except  first) 

Specialised  dentition 

4.  CHIROLEMURESt 
(  Chiromyida) 

Dent.  i8=j.2.£.3 

»      Rodent  dentition 

I 

3.  PLATYRK- 

5.   AKCTOPITHKCAt 

f 

HINAE 

Dent  12—  2  *  3  2 

\ffapale 

Flat-nosed  apes 
Besperopithcca 

Nail  on  hallux  only 

\Midas 

II 

SlMIAB 

Western  apes 
(American) 
Nostrils  lateral, 

6.  .DYSMOPITHECAf 

'Call-lthri* 
Nyctipithtcto 

Apes 
{Pithed  or  simialcs} 
Orbits  completely 
separated  from  the 

with  wide  partition 
3  premolars 

4.  CATARRHINAE 

.   Nails  on  all  fingers 

7.  CJYNOPITHECAt 

Mycetes 
Atcks. 

Cynoceptotut 

temporal  depression 

Narrow-nosed 

D^nL  32=|.i.|.5 

Cercopithecu* 

by  a  bony  septum. 
Womb  simple,  pear- 
shaped.       Placenta 
discoid,    deciduate. 
Cerebrum  relatively 
large  and  much  fur* 
roved. 

apes 
Eopitheca 
Eastern  apes 
(Arctogoea) 
Europe,  Asia,  and 
Africa. 
Nostrils  forward, 
with  narrow  sep- 
tutn 

Generally  with  tail 
and  cheek-pouches 
Sacrum  with  3  or 
4  vertebrae 
8.  ANTHROPO- 
MORPHA  t 

Inuus 

Semnopiihtatt 
Colobus 
Nasalif 

Hykbates 
Satyrus 
Pliopithecu** 
Gorilla 

2  premolars 
Nails  on  all 
fingers 

.No  tail  or  cheek- 
pouches 
Sacrum  with  5 

Anthropithecwi 
Dryopithccus* 
Pithecanthropi** 

\                                         »     »     «^**        s» 

V              vertebrae 

Homo 

168 


4— GENEALOGICAL  TREE  OF  THE  PRIMATES 


Anthropoids  afHcaoae 

Antbropitbecus 
Gorilla  chimpanzee 
gina 


Drjopitbecus 
fontani 


Anthropomorpha 
Anthropini 


Homo 
sapiens 


Anthropoldes  aslaticae 

Satyrus  orang 


Hylobates 

agiiis 


Platyrrhinae 


tysmopitheca 

Mycetes 
Ateles 


AreUpitheca 

Eapaiida 


Cebus 


Protbylobates 
atarus 

Cercopitbecus 
Nyctipithecus 


I»emuravida 

Prcsimiae  yeneralistae 

Necrolemures   Arcbipitbecu* 


Pliopithecus 
entiquus 


Oatarrhinae 

Cynopltheca 

Semnopiihecus 


Papiomorpha 
Cynocephalida 


Lemnrogona 

Protimiae  specialulat 


Cbirolemures 


A&aptomorpba 


Siasiae 


Adapida 


Hecrolemures 

Antolemares 


Tareolemures 
(Tarsias) 


CXJngulata) 


Lemuravida 
Pachylemures 

I 

Arcbiprimas 
Prochcriata 


[Carnassial 


169 


EXPLANATION  OF  GENEALOGICAL  TABLE  I. 

CHRONOMETRIC    REDUCTION    OF    BIOGENETIC    PERIODS. 

THE  enormous  length  of  the  biogenetic  periods  (z.  <?.,  the 
periods  during  which  organic  life  has  been  evolving  on  our 
planet)  is  still  very  differently  estimated  by  geologists  and 
paleontologists,  astronomers  and  physicists,  because  the  em- 
pirical data  of  the  calculation  are  very  incomplete  and  admit 
great  differences  of  estimate.  However,  most  modern  ex- 
perts aver  that  their  length  runs  to  100  and  200  million 
years  (some  say  double  this,  and  even  more).  If  we  take 
the  lesser  figure  of  100  millions,  we  find  this  distributed 
over  the  five  chief  periods  of  organic  geology  very  much  as 
is  shown  on  Table  I.  In  order  to  get  a  clearer  idea  of  the 
vast  duration  of  these  evolutionary  periods,  and  to  appreciate 
the  relative  shortness  of  the  "historical  period,"  Dr.  H. 
Schmidt  (Jena)  has  reduced  the  100,000,000  years  to  a  day. 
In  this  scheme  the  twenty-four  hours  of  "creation-day"  are 
distributed  as  follows  over  the  five  evolutionary  periods : 

I.  Archeozoic  period  (52  million  years)   =i2h.  3om. 

II.  Paleozoic  period  (34  million  years)      =  8h.     ym. 

III.  Mesozoic  period  (n  million  years)       =  2h.  38m. 

VI.  Cenozoic  period  (3  million  years)  43m. 

V.  Anthropozoic   period    (o*  1-0*2    million 

years)  2m. 

If  we  put  the  length  of  the  "historic  period"  at  6,000 
years,  it  only  makes  five-seconds  of  "creation-day;"  the 
Christian  era  would  amount  to  two  seconds. 


170 


POSTSCRIPT. 

EVOLUTION  AND  JESUITISM. 

THE  relation  of  the  theory  of  evolution  to 
the  teaching  of  the  Jesuits  is  in  many 
respects  so  important  and  so  liable  to  mis- 
understanding that  I  have  felt  it  very  desirable 
to  make  it  clear  in  the  present  work.  I  have, 
I  think,  clearly  showed  that  the  two  doctrines 
are  diametrically  and  irreconcilably  opposed, 
and  that  the  attempt  of  the  modern  Jesuits  to 
reconcile  the  two  antagonists  is  mere  soph- 
istry. I  wrote  with  more  special  reference 
to  the  works  of  the  learned  Jesuit,  Father 
Erich  Wasmann,  not  only  because  that  writer 
deals  with  the  subject  more  ably  and  com- 
prehensively than  most  of  his  colleagues,  but 
because  he  is  more  competent  to  make  a  sci- 
entific defence  of  his  views  on  account  of  his 
long  studies  of  the  ants  and  his  general  knowl- 
edge of  biology.  He  has  made  a  vigorous 
reply  to  my  strictures  in  an  "open  letter"  to 

171 


Xast  TKHorfcs  on  ^Evolution, 

me,  which  appeared  on  2nd  May,  1905,  in  the 
Berlin  (or  Roman)  Germania,  and  in  the  Kol- 
nische  Volkszeitung. 

The  sophistical  objections  that  Wasmann 
raises  to  my  lectures,  and  his  misleading  state- 
ment of  the  most  important  problems,  oblige 
me  to  make  a  brief  reply  in  this  "  Postscript." 
It  will  be  impossible,  of  course,  to  meet  all  his 
points  here,  and  convince  him  of  their  futility. 
Not  even  the  clearest  and  most  rigorous  logic 
makes  a  man  a  match  for  a  Jesuit;  he  adroitly 
employs  the  facts  themselves  for  the  purpose 
of  concealing  the  truth  by  his  perverse  state- 
ments. It  is  vain  to  hope  to  convince  my  op- 
ponent by  rational  argument,  when  he  believes 
that  religious  faith  is  "  higher  than  all  reason." 
A  good  idea  can  be  formed  of  his  position 
from  the  conclusion  of  the  eleventh  chapter  of 
his  work,  Modern  Biology  and  the  Theory  of 
Evolution  (p.  307).  "There  can  never  be  a 
real  contradiction  between  natural  knowledge 
and  supernatural  revelation,  because  both  have 
their  origin  in  the  same  Divine  spirit."  This 

is  a  fine  comment  on  the  incessant  struggle 

172 


Bvolutton  arts  Jesuitism, 

that  "natural  science"  is  compelled  to  main- 
tain against  "supernatural  revelation/'  and 
that  fills  the  whole  philosophical  and  theolog- 
ical literature  of  the  half  century. 

Wasmann's  orthodox  position  is  shown 
most  clearly  by  the  following  statement: 
"The  theory  of  evolution,  to  which  I  sub- 
scribe as  a  scientist  and  a  philosopher,  rests 
on  the  foundations  of  the  Christian  doctrine 
which  I  hold  to  be  the  only  true  one:  'In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth.' '  Unfortunately,  he  does  not  tell  us 
how  he  conceives  this  "creation  out  of  noth- 
ing/1 and  what  he  means  by  "God"  and 
"heavens/*  I  would  recommend  him  to  con- 
sult Troelslund's  excellent  work,  The  Idea  of 
Heaven  and  of  the  World. 

Almost  at  the  same  time  that  I  was  deliver- 
ing my  lectures  at  Berlin,  Wasmann  was  giv- 
ing a  series  of  thoroughly  Jesuitical  lectures 
on  the  subject  at  Lucerne.  The  Catholic  Lu- 
cerne journal  Vaterland,  describes  these  lec- 
tures as  a  work  of  emancipation"  and  "a 
critical  moment  in  the  intellectual  struggle." 

173 


Xast  KHorfcs  on  jBwlutton. 

It  quotes  the  following  sentence:  "At  the 
highest  stage  of  the  theistic  philosophy  of 
evolution  is  God,  the  omnipotent  creator  of 
heaven  and  earth;  next  to  him,  created  by 
him,  is  the  immortal  soul  of  man.  We  reach 
this  conclusion,  not  only  by  faith,  but  by  in- 
ductive and  strictly  scientific  methods.  The 
system  that  is  reared  on  the  theistic  doctrine 
evolution  is  the  sole  rational  and  truly  sci- 
entific system;  the  atheistic  position  is  ir- 
rational and  unscientific." 

In  order  to  see  the  untruth  of  this  and  the 
succeeding  statements  of  the  modern  Jesuits, 
we  have  to  remember  that  the  Churches — 
both  Protestant  and  Catholic — have  vigor- 
ously combated  the  theory  of  evolution  with 
all  their  power  for  thirty  years,  ever  since  the 
first  appearance  of  Darwinism.  The  shrewd 
clergy  saw  more  clearly  than  many  of  our 
naive  philosophers  that  Darwin's  theory  of 
descent  is  the  inevitable  key-stone  of  the 
whole  theory  of  evolution,  and  that  "  the  de- 
scent of  man  from  other  mammals"  is  a  rigor- 
ous deduction  from  it.  As  Karl  Escherich 

174 


Bvoiutton  ano  Jesuitism* 

well  says:  "  Hitherto  we  read  in  the  faces  of 
our  clerical  opponents  only  hatred,  bitterness, 
contempt,  mockery,  or  pity  in  regard  to  the 
new  invader  of  their  dogmatic  structure,  the 
idea  of  evolution.  Now  (since  Wasmann's 
apostasy)  the  assurance  of  the  Catholic  jour- 
nals, that  the  Church  has  admitted  the  theory 
of  evolution  for  decades,  make  us  smile.  Evo- 
lution has  now  pressed  on  to  its  final  victory, 
and  these  people  would  have  us  believe  that 
they  were  never  unfriendly  to  it,  never  shrieked 
and  stormed  against  it.  How,  they  say,  could 
anyone  have  been  so  foolish,  when  the  theory 
of  evolution  puts  the  wisdom  and  power  of 
the  creator  in  a  nobler  light  than  ever.  We 
find  a  similar  diplomatic  retreat  in  the  popular 
work  of  the  Jesuit,  Father  Martin  Gander, 
The  Theory  of  Descent  (1904):  "Thus  the 
modern  forms  of  matter  were  not  immediately 
created  by  God ;  they  are  effects  of  the  forma- 
tive forces,  which  were  put  by  the  creator  in 
the  primitive  matter,  and  gradually  came  into 
view  in  the  course  of  the  earth's  history,  when 
the  external  conditions  were  given  in  the 

175 


Xast  Morfcs  on  Evolution. 

proper  combination."     That  is  a  remarkable 
change  of  front  on  the  part  of  the  clergy. 

We  see  the  astonishing  system  of  the  Jes- 
uits, and  of  the  papacy  of  which  they  are  the 
bodyguard,  not  only  in  this  impossible  jumble 
of  evolution  and  theology,  but  also  in  other 
passages  of  Wasmann,  Gander,  Gutberlet,  and 
their  colleagues.  The  serious  dangers  that 
threaten  our  schools,  and  the  whole  of  our 
higher  culture,  from  this  Jesuitical  sham- 
science,  have  been  well  pointed  out  lately  by 
Count  von  Hoensbroech  in  the  preface  to  his 
famous  work,  The  Papacy  in  its  Social  and 
Intellectual  Activity  (1901).  "The  papacy," 
he  says,  "in  its  claim  to  a  Divine  authority, 
transmitted  to  it  by  Christ,  endowed  with  in- 
fallibility in  all  questions  of  faith  and  morals, 
is  the  greatest,  the  most  fatal,  the  most  suc- 
cessful error  in  the  whole  of  history.  This 
great  error  is  girt  about  by  the  thousands  of 
lies  of  its  supporters;  this  error  and  these 
lies  work  for  a  system  of  power  and  domina- 
tion, for  ultramontanism.  The  truth  can  but 

struggle  against  it.  ...  Nowhere  do  we  find 

176 


36 volution  anfc  Jesuitism. 

so  much  and  such  systematic  lying  as  in  Cath- 
olic science,  and  in  the  history  of  the  Church 
and  the  papacy;  nowhere  are  the  lies  and 
misrepresentations  more  pernicious  than  here; 
they  have  become  part  and  parcel  of  the 
Catholic  religion.  The  facts  of  history  tell 
plainly  enough  that  the  papacy  is  anything 
but  a  Divine  institution ;  that  it  has  brought 
more  curses  and  ruin, more  bloody  turmoil  and 
profanation,  into  humanity's  holiest  of  holies, 
religion,  than  any  other  power  in  the  world." 
This  severe  judgment  on  the  papacy  and 
Jesuitism  is  the  more  valuable  as  Count  von 
Hoensbroech  was  himself  in  the  service  of  the 
Jesuit  Congregation  for  forty  years,  and 
learned  thoroughly  all  its  tricks  and  intrigues. 
In  making  them  public,  and  basing  his  charges 
on  numerous  official  documents,  he  has  done 
great  service  to  the  cause  of  truth  and  civiliza- 
tion. I  was  merely  repeating  his  well-founded 
verdict  when,  at  the  close  of  my  first  lecture, 
I  described  the  papacy  as  the  greatest  swindle 
the  world  has  ever  submitted  to. 

A  curious  irony  of  Fate  gave  me  an  oppor- 

177 


Xast  TKaorfcs  on  Bx>olutioru 

tunity,  the  same  evening,  to  experience  in  my 
own  person  the  correctness  of  this  verdict. 
A  Berlin  reporter  telegraphed  to  London  that 
I  had  fully  accepted  the  new  theory  of  Father 
Wasmann,  and  recognized  the  error  of  Dar- 
winism ;  that  the  theory  of  evolution  is  not 
applicable  to  man  on  account  of  his  mental 
superiority.  This  welcome  intelligence  passed 
from  London  to  America  and  many  other 
countries.  The  result  was  a  flood  of  letters 
from  zealous  adherents  of  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion, interrogating  me  as  to  my  unintelligible 
change  of  front.  I  thought  at  first  that  the 
telegram  was  due  to  the  misunderstanding  or 
the  error  of  a  reporter,  but  I  was  afterwards 
informed  from  Berlin  that  the  false  message 
was  probably  due  to  a  deliberate  corruption 
by  some  religious  person  who  thought  to 
render  a  service  to  his  faith  by  this  untruth. 
He  had  substituted  "  supported "  for  "re- 
futed," and  "error"  for  "truth." 

The  struggle  for  the  triumph  of  truth,  in 
which  I  have  had  the  most  curious  experiences 
during  the  last  forty  years,  has  brought  me  a 

178 


Bvolution  aito  ^Jesuitism, 

number  of  new  impressions  through  my  Ber- 
lin lectures.  The  flood  of  calumnies  of  all 
kinds  that  the  religious  press  (especially  the 
Lutheran  Reichsbote  and  the  Catholic  Ger- 
mania]  poured  over  me  exceeded  any  that 
had  gone  before.  Dr.  Schmidt  gave  a  selec- 
tion from  them  in  the  Freie  Wort  (No.  4,  p. 
144).  I  have  already  pointed  out,  in  the  Ap- 
pendix to  the  popular  edition  of  the  Riddle  of 
the  Universe  [German  edition],  what  unworthy 
means  are  employed  by  my  clerical  and  meta- 
physical opponents  for  the  purpose  of  bring- 
ing my  popular  scientific  works  into  disrepute. 
I  can  only  repeat  here  that  the  calumniation 
of  my  person  does  not  move  me,  and  does  not 
injure  the  cause  of  truth  which  I  serve.  It  is 
just  this  unusually  loud  alarm  of  my  clerical 
enemies,  that  tells  me  my  sacrifices  have  not 
been  in  vain,  and  that  I  have  put  the  modest 
key-stone  to  the  work  of  my  life — "The  ad- 
vancement of  knowledge  by  the  spread  of  the 
idea  of  evolution." 


179 


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1048086 


QH     Haeckel,  Ernst  Heinrich  Philipp  August,  1834r-1019. 
361       Lnst  words  on  evolution;  a  popular  retrospect  and  summary, 
HI  5  by  Krnst  Haeckel  ...    Tr.  from  the  2d  ed.  by  Joseph  McCube. 
With  portrait  and  three  plates.       New  York,  Eckier  [1905] 
127  p.    front,  (port)  in  pi.    25*". 

A  course  of  three  lectures  delivered  at  the  Academy  of  music,  Berlin, 
April  1905. 

CONTENTS.— The  controversy  about  creation.— The  struggle  over  our 
genealogical  tree. — The  controversy  over  the  soul. — Appendix:  Evolu- 
tionary tables.— Postscript :  Evolution  and  Jesuitism. 

1.  Evolution— Hist.  2.  Religion  and  science— 1900-  O  i.  McCabc, 
Joseph,  1868-  trV".  Title. 

hem  /sd.  9/7^ 

Library  of  Congress 


) 


QH361.H1G 


mod. 


